How to Avoid Common Mistakes when rolling out Workday
by Seena Mojahedi | December 16, 2020
Time and time again, we speak to Workday customers that have just gone live, or, are just one year past their go-live date, when they start to uncover configuration and data issues.
Sometimes they are minor and can be easily remediated.
Sometimes they are large and complicated and cause all sorts of compliance issues for the business.
Case in point:
We were working with a client in which their entire Workday Benefits module was not set up correctly during their Phase 1 Deployment. The core of the configuration did not match their requirements. This led to many compliance and data-related issues.
During the first year after go-live, they were putting out fires every week and were never able to focus on stabilizing the platform.
This led to a lot of extra Workday professional services spend that could have been avoided.
Good News:
They are on a better path now!
Using our expertise of 20+ end-to-end Workday implementations, Kandor has coached them through what went wrong during the implementation. We honed in on the problem areas and shared our knowledge on how to improve their processes, transaction best practices, and system configurations.
We’ve trained their Workday Administrators and helped them build out their Workday team. To date, we’ve been able to save our client approximately $150,000 in labor and time.
As our clients move through their Workday rollouts, we’ve compiled the top 5 common mistakes to avoid.
1. Simplify the Workday Implementation
2. Change Management and Adoption
3. Strategically Plan Data Conversion & Integration Strategy
4. System & User Acceptance Testing
5. Understand the Company Financial Goals & Processes
If we can help just one new Workday client in setting them up for success just by reading this blog, we’ve done our job. We hope that the impact will be greater than that.
1. Simplify the Workday Implementation
Keep it simple.
Utilize Workday’s best practice configuration and the Launch Methodology.
Chances are, if you’re looking for high-quality enterprise resource planning software like Workday and you’ve made the investment, you are looking for enhanced processes as well as enhanced system capabilities.
Do not complicate the implementation by attempting to “lift and shift” your current setup or over engineering your Workday instance.
Within your current HRIS or ERP platform, system capabilities and processes have likely organically evolved over time, and now you have an opportunity to start with a clean sheet of paper.
Utilize best practices learned from your Workday® Client-Side PM and system implementer, then add on the bells and whistles once you’re already live with the platform.
2. Change Management and Adoption
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Regardless of how simple or complex you build out your Workday tenant, or how “perfectly” you’ve implemented your Workday configurations and integrations, the real success of a Workday rollout is measured by how effective that change is adopted by the business (end users, managers, administrator, and employees).
The lack of a change management strategy and plan is a common gap in Workday implementations. Many clients focus too much on the configuration and the delivery, and not enough focus on the communication, training, and adoption.
If you do not have the time or resources to focus on change management, then you can work on some low-hanging fruit change practices to drive stronger adoption rates at go-Live.
Generally speaking, we recommend focusing in areas that are high-touch for specific personas.
1. Prioritize capabilities that are high-touch
in Workday.
Example: Requesting time off. For some clients, this is the only time an employee logs into Workday, so it’s your only chance to “impress” your end users and make them a Workday promoter.
2. Prioritize training for cyclical programs.
Calibration, Advance Compensation, Performance Management, etc. Make sure your power users (HRBPs, executives, etc.) have a great experience when launching these programs in Workday. They are your true Workday champions and can help spread the word on how great Workday is if they truly believe it from their own personal experience.
We also recommend being mindful of how many Workday modules and capabilities you implement for any single release.
If you roll them all out at once and you haven’t prioritized the change enablement, you may find your workforce providing negative feedback about the tool.
If you roll them out one at a time and provide training and appoint change champions across the organization, gather feedback on the process, and track metrics on your adoption rates, you are likely to hear a lot of “I LOVE WORKDAY” around the office.
Take the time and cycles you need to get it right and it will pay off in the long run.
You also want to ensure that you have aligned to change agents across your organizations that will help tell the story.
Control the narrative. That starts at the top, with the People Team strategy and executive OKRs, and trickles all the way down to the first-line manager.
One platform, One story, One cohesive strategy, One Workday.
If those pieces fit together nicely, we promise you that you will be happy with your Workday implementation, and so will all the power users and end users in your business.
3. Strategically Plan Data Conversion & Integration Strategy
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The largest workstream in any Phase 1 Workday implementation is data conversion.
Think about it… You’re ripping out your old HRIS or ERP system and migrating all of your human capital data and/or financial management data into Workday.
You need to consider how much history you should load, how you will gain access to that data to present to your system implementer, validating the data, and much more.
To top it all off… How is your data quality?!?
That’s right, you will need to go through and cleanse your data, validate that it is correct, and transform it into a format that is loadable into Workday.
Otherwise, you are loading poor quality data into Workday. And you know what they say about data… “Garbage in, garbage out.”
If we can offer one piece of advice about data, is not to underestimate the amount of time and internal resources it will require to successfully stand up the Workday platform.
Integrations are used to facilitate the flow of data from Workday to up and down stream systems.
Consider what you absolutely need for Phase 1 and prioritize the integrations that are critical to be in compliance (with IT General Controls, HR, Accounting Controls), as well as the ones that are critical for Employee and Manager self-service.
You also want to make sure that you don’t overdo it with integrations, particularly in areas where there are feasible workaround solutions and will not significantly impact your business operations. Find the right balance for Phase 1, and once you are live, the sky's the limit.
4. System & User Acceptance Testing
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Testing! Testing! Testing!
Make sure that you dedicate multiple resources at full capacity to testing, across all the functional teams.
There are many reasons for this, including and not limited to:
Quality Control - Shake out all the bugs from your Workday configurations. When you go live, your Workday Support team, your managers, your executive team, and all end users are new to Workday. Don’t give them a broken system.
Understand the configuration - When your internal team is testing in Workday, it’s important that they understand the underlying configurations. This will help them hone on on the correct positive and negative tests scenarios that will more accurately shake the Workday tenant down.
Minimal Support from System Implementers - Your system implementer will always tell you that the “client is responsible for testing.” This essentially alleviates the liability of bugs identified post go-live. Make sure you’re getting the right level of testing support from your system implementer, and if you are unsure, hire an external consultant that has done it before.
5. Understand the company Financial Goals & Processes
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If you are considering or implementing Workday Financials or Workday Adaptive Planning, understanding the drivers and decision levers of the CFO will help you with the business case and the Workday design.
Is your CFO looking to cut costs and overhead?
Do they have a desire for rich financial reporting within Workday?
Are they looking to move towards a zero-day period close?
Consider these questions and others as you prepare for Workday Financials and keep them in mind as you’re making design decisions for the following modules:
Financial Accounting (General Ledger, Financial Reporting, Period Close, Year End Close)
Procurement (a.k.a Procure-to-pay, req-to-check), Supply Chain Management, Supplier Accounts
Revenue Recognition (ASC 606, Account Receivable, Billing, Invoicing)
Expenses
Planning, Forecasting, Modeling
Banking, Settlement, Reconciliation, and Cash Management
Projects, Project Billing, PSA
Conclusion
Whether you are about to start your implementation, in the middle of one, or have already completed your Phase 1 Workday rollout, we hope that you find these 5 tips helpful for your business. These tips have helped our clients as they have moved through their Workday platform lifecycle, and we hope you find them helpful as well.
A message from Kandor Solutions
The executive management team at Kandor have each been certified for nearly a decade with high quality Big 5 firm experience and client-side experience with some of the most prestigious technology companies in the world (Google, Slack, Coinbase). Our consultants have implemented in the largest enterprises and the SMB (small to medium business) space, Fortune 100 clients, and managed Workday for the largest big tech FAANG companies in the world.
We are excited to share these learnings with you and hope that they will make an impact as you’re working through your Workday deployment. Should you have any questions, need augmented support, Workday advice, Workday resources, etc., please do not hesitate to reach out. We have built Kandor Solutions to help Workday clients navigate these issues and set them up for success.
Or call us at
415-237-3066
About the Author
Seena is the Founder & Owner of Kandor Solutions and has been driving business value for Workday clients and partners for nearly nine years. After working on the consulting side at DayNine Consulting, he spent six years at prestigious technology companies such as Google, Slack, and Coinbase. He has been in the trenches on over 20 client engagements and has a deep understanding of what it takes to plan, build, and run a successful Workday platform.
He started Kandor Solutions because he is passionate about Workday, and is even more passionate about ensuring the Workday ecosystem has top talent to pick from.
When he’s not working, he loves spending time with his family, traveling around the world, snowboarding, hiking, and enjoying his morning cappuccino. He holds a BS in Business Administration with an emphasis in Computer Information Systems from California Polytechnic University, Pomona.