What is Workday implementation advisory?

Independent oversight of an implementation on the client side. Your system integrator delivers the build; advisory makes sure the decisions inside it still make sense to you eighteen months after go-live, and that someone with no stake in the statement of work is reading it on your behalf.

Do we need our own Workday consultant if we already have a system integrator?

Most SI methodologies assume a two-in-a-box model, with an experienced client-side lead opposite their project manager. Most organizations discover the second box is empty, because it is the first role cut and the hardest to hire for. That gap is what advisory fills.

Do you implement Workday?

No, and we do not want to. We are not a Workday implementation partner. We advise the client side of an implementation someone else is delivering, which is precisely why we can tell you when your integrator is leading you somewhere you should not go.

Can we engage you before we have selected a system integrator?

Yes, and it is the cheapest point to start. We hold a view on the major integrators, we advise through the RFP without a stake in who wins, and we red-line the statement of work to close the gaps those documents typically leave open.

What is a client-side project manager, and do we need one?

The person who owns the implementation from your side: your decisions, your timeline, your acceptance criteria. Without one, the integrator effectively manages both sides of the table and the trade-offs get made in their interest by default rather than by anyone acting badly.

Our implementation partner is not delivering. What are our options?

First establish what the statement of work actually obliges them to do, which is often narrower than everyone assumed. Then work out whether the gap is capability, resourcing, or scope, because the remedy differs. We do this from your side of the table and it usually takes days, not weeks.

What does advisory look like contractually?

Usually a retainer or fractional hours per week or month. It can be an embedded client-side project manager, advice to your own PMO, depth on a single workstream, or a combination of advisory and staffing.

We are already mid-implementation. Is it too late?

No, though earlier is cheaper. Teams often decline advisory at kickoff and come back urgently once they are stuck in testing. The work is the same; there is just less room to maneuver and fewer decisions still open.

What client-side roles does a Workday implementation actually require?

Read your statement of work: it specifies this in detail, and the list is longer than most organizations expect. A client-side project manager, functional leads per area, data and integration owners, testing coordination, and change management. The common failure is assigning those to people who already have full-time jobs running your operations, then discovering in week six that each one is closer to a full-time role.

How do we know if we are ready to start a Workday implementation?

Readiness is dedicated capacity across every workstream the statement of work names, requirements that are decided rather than still being debated, data and integration ownership settled, and a governance and support model chosen before go-live rather than after it. Our free readiness toolkit walks eight dimensions of this if you want to assess it yourself first.

How much does Workday implementation advisory cost?

It scales with how much of a person you need and for how long, so a number quoted before that is understood is a guess. The comparison worth making is against the cost of the decisions it prevents, which is where implementations actually overrun.

Do you replace our system integrator?

No. We sit on your side of the table while they deliver. Our job is to make sure the decisions being made now still make sense long after they have gone.

What do we get out of it?

Decisions made with how Workday will actually be governed and operated after go-live in mind, rather than discovered afterwards, which is when they become expensive.

Implementation Advisory

Workday expertise on your side of the table.

Your integrator has a methodology, a timeline, and a statement of work. None of those are the same thing as your interests. We bring expertise from 40+ Workday implementations to the client side, so you see around corners rather than discovering them.

Free Readiness Toolkit 2-minute Health Check

When teams call us

Before you sign
Rare. Usually a second-time implementer
Plan, design, build
Where most engagements start
Testing
Where the rest call
Go-live
Now it is stabilization

Most teams think they are fine until testing. By then the tech debt is already accrued, and after go-live it is a rescue rather than advisory.

Seeing around corners

Four things nobody flags until they are expensive.

None of these show up as a red status. Your integrator will not raise them, because each one sits on your side of the statement of work. They surface at testing, at go-live, or a year later as a backlog nobody can explain and nobody budgeted for.

Seeing them coming is what lets you land on your feet at go-live and keep the stabilization window short instead of open-ended.

Implementation Readiness

Every statement of work specifies how deep the client side has to go, and almost every client underestimates it. Dedicated capacity across workstreams, requirements that are actually ready, data and architecture decisions made before anyone starts building. Teams discover the true demand somewhere around week six, when the people they assigned part-time are already underwater.

Governance and the Support Model

Who leads Workday after go-live, how many people, and with which skills across plan, build and run. Decide it during the implementation and you design toward it. Skip it and you find out at go-live, with an exhausted team, by urgently hiring a managed services provider and throwing work over a wall.

Change Management and Adoption

A rollout is not measured by how well the system is configured but by how the business adopts it. We have seen implementations where the technology landed cleanly and the rollout landed flat, with end users and with the leadership who funded it. The workarounds start on day one and never fully go away.

Data, Integrations and Testing

The largest workstream in a Phase 1, and the most routinely underestimated. Testing is also the last thing in the plan and the first thing compressed when the date holds firm. It is where everything decided in design becomes visible, which is why teams who thought they were fine call us during it.

Proof

Engaged for two roles. Grown by the client to six.

Lightspeed brought us in for change management and implementation advisory on a 16-country Workday deployment, alongside its system integrator.

As the implementation progressed and the client-side demand became clear, the engagement grew to six full-time resources covering the functional areas the program needed most.

2 → 6: Roles at engagement, then at peak
9 Months: Implementation delivered on time and on budget
16 Countries: Live in one deployment

The Seats We Ended Up Holding

Client-Side Project Management Advisor
Benefits Lead
Payroll Lead
Position Management LeadBringing Finance, HR and Recruiting onto one structure
Change Management
Implementation Advisory

Each seat was added because the program needed it, and because the last one had earned the next. We did not pitch a single one.

What go-live actually looked like.

None of that is the default. It is what client-side strategy, mobilization and execution produce when they are resourced from the start, and it is the difference between going live and going live well.

Global on day oneLive across 16 countries with globalization and localization handled during the build rather than deferred to a later phase.
Position management that heldA structure mature enough that Finance, HR and Recruiting could read it without reconciling three versions of headcount.
The Workday team already builtRoles, skills and coverage decided and staffed before go-live, not hired in a hurry afterward.
Processes documented end to endFor administrators and for end users, written while the knowledge was current rather than reconstructed later.
Stable in 30 daysA short, bounded stabilization window instead of an open-ended one.

“Working with Kandor proved immediate and measurable ROI. They really helped us see around corners.”

HNHeather NicholsonVP, People Operations, HRIS & Analytics, Lightspeed Commerce

Phase Zero

Every statement of work has two columns. Only one of them comes staffed.

A Workday implementation is not something that happens to you. Your integrator owns one half of every workstream and you own the other, and the statement of work says so in detail. Phase Zero is reading that document honestly and staffing your half before week one.

We work the right-hand column. We are not an implementation partner and we do not want to be one.

Your Workday system implementer

Chosen well and held to the statement of work

Your internal Workday team

Resourced and decided, not learning on the job

Provides a project manager for their own resources, deliverables and project plan.
Project Management
Requires a dedicated project manager for the client-side plan, covering staffing, internal tasks, testing coordination and deployment readiness. None of it falls within the integrator’s scope.
Follows a prescribed methodology and configures the solution to the decisions you approve.
Design Decisions
Arrives with cross-functional and business process requirements already agreed, then makes design decisions at the pace that methodology assumes.
Builds the integrations and loads the data you provide.
Data and Integrations
Owns data quality and mapping, and both have to be right on day one. Data and integrations are each high-risk workstreams, and either one can move a go-live date.
Confirms that testing is a client responsibility.
Testing
Owns test strategy, resourcing, scenario design, execution and acceptance criteria, usually with very little guidance and no prior experience of testing Workday. This is the point at which most programs discover how much has been left to them.
Advises that change management needs to be done.
Change and Adoption
Owns change strategy and execution, including documentation, training and quick reference guides, and is accountable for adoption across the business.
Does not raise it.
Governance and Support
Identifies internal and external resourcing, builds the Workday team, establishes RACI and roles, and owns demand management after go-live.

Your system implementer configures the solution and follows a prescribed Workday methodology. That is their scope, and it is the smaller half. The majority of the work sits on your side of the table, where they are not scoped or staffed to do it.

If you read that right-hand column and could not name who owns each line, that is the conversation worth having, and it takes half an hour.

You will be talking to Seena, not a sales rep.

Book a strategy call

What engagement looks like

Four shapes, depending on what you already have.

Every statement of work assumes two in a box: one seat theirs, one seat yours. The seat on your side is the one that tends to be empty, or filled by somebody who already has a full-time job running your operations.

Client-Side Project Management

The role most statements of work assume you already have. Your decisions, your timeline, your acceptance criteria, held by someone who has done this before. Without it the integrator effectively manages both sides of the table.

Client-Side Roles, Filled

The two-in-a-box seats your SOW specifies: functional leads, testing support and testing strategy, data and integration owners. This is what keeps your operations team running operations instead of absorbing a second full-time job.

Advisory to Your Team and PMO

You keep your own people and we advise them, at whatever altitude helps: the program, the PMO, or a single workstream that is going quietly wrong. Including how to hold the integrator to a thorough job.

Change Enablement

Comms, training and documentation run as deliberately as the build, for end users, managers, administrators and the executives who funded it. The discipline that decides whether the configuration you paid for is the one people actually use.

This is for you if

You have no internal client-side Workday expertise, and the SOW assumes you do
Your team has not run a Workday implementation before and is learning the methodology on it
You have skills, capability or capacity gaps across the workstreams the SOW specifies
You want the first build to be production quality, not a starting point you spend a year fixing
You want to know your implementation spend is buying what you think it is buying

This is not for you if

You are already live and stable, and want optimization rather than oversight
You want an implementation partner. We are not one, by design
You want someone to validate a decision that has already been made

If the left column reads like your situation, the useful next step is a conversation about where your gaps actually are, not a download.

You will be talking to Seena, not a sales rep.

Book a strategy call

Free Toolkit

Workday Implementation Readiness Toolkit

An eight-dimension readiness assessment for working out whether your organization is actually ready, and what to fix before the implementation exposes it for you.

Who does the work

Your leadership team, and the bench behind them.

You get named senior leadership on the engagement and the Kintellects bench behind it. The people below are who you hold responsible for the outcome; the depth that delivers it runs a good deal wider.

Seena Mojahedi
CEO and Founder
Former client-side Workday leader. Vets every consultant on the bench personally. Solution focused, outcome oriented, and set on raising the quality of the Workday ecosystem itself.
Belinda Smit
SVP, Services Delivery
Runs delivery for Kandor Solutions and built the frameworks behind our position management and M&A work. An engagement lead, and oversees the managed-services pods.

intellects

Our own bench. Every consultant vetted personally by Seena Mojahedi, minimum 5 years in the Workday ecosystem and typically 5-7.

Most have worked both client-side and partner-side, the operator’s lens and the deployment playbook in the same person.

Workday HCM
Recruiting, talent optimization, benefits
Workday Financials
Core financials and reporting
Adaptive Planning
Formerly Adaptive Insights
Workday Payroll
Payroll, absence and time tracking, US and Canada

Questions

Common questions about implementation advisory

What is Workday implementation advisory?: Independent oversight of an implementation on the client side. Your system integrator delivers the build; advisory makes sure the decisions inside it still make sense to you eighteen months after go-live, and that someone with no stake in the statement of work is reading it on your behalf.
Do we need our own Workday consultant if we already have a system integrator?: Most SI methodologies assume a two-in-a-box model, with an experienced client-side lead opposite their project manager. Most organizations discover the second box is empty, because it is the first role cut and the hardest to hire for. That gap is what advisory fills.
Do you implement Workday?: No, and we do not want to. We are not a Workday implementation partner. We advise the client side of an implementation someone else is delivering, which is precisely why we can tell you when your integrator is leading you somewhere you should not go.
Can we engage you before we have selected a system integrator?: Yes, and it is the cheapest point to start. We hold a view on the major integrators, we advise through the RFP without a stake in who wins, and we red-line the statement of work to close the gaps those documents typically leave open.
What is a client-side project manager, and do we need one?: The person who owns the implementation from your side: your decisions, your timeline, your acceptance criteria. Without one, the integrator effectively manages both sides of the table and the trade-offs get made in their interest by default rather than by anyone acting badly.
Our implementation partner is not delivering. What are our options?: First establish what the statement of work actually obliges them to do, which is often narrower than everyone assumed. Then work out whether the gap is capability, resourcing, or scope, because the remedy differs. We do this from your side of the table and it usually takes days, not weeks.
What does advisory look like contractually?: Usually a retainer or fractional hours per week or month. It can be an embedded client-side project manager, advice to your own PMO, depth on a single workstream, or a combination of advisory and staffing.
We are already mid-implementation. Is it too late?: No, though earlier is cheaper. Teams often decline advisory at kickoff and come back urgently once they are stuck in testing. The work is the same; there is just less room to maneuver and fewer decisions still open.
What client-side roles does a Workday implementation actually require?: Read your statement of work: it specifies this in detail, and the list is longer than most organizations expect. A client-side project manager, functional leads per area, data and integration owners, testing coordination, and change management. The common failure is assigning those to people who already have full-time jobs running your operations, then discovering in week six that each one is closer to a full-time role.
How do we know if we are ready to start a Workday implementation?: Readiness is dedicated capacity across every workstream the statement of work names, requirements that are decided rather than still being debated, data and integration ownership settled, and a governance and support model chosen before go-live rather than after it. Our free readiness toolkit walks eight dimensions of this if you want to assess it yourself first.
How much does Workday implementation advisory cost?: It scales with how much of a person you need and for how long, so a number quoted before that is understood is a guess. The comparison worth making is against the cost of the decisions it prevents, which is where implementations actually overrun.
Do you replace our system integrator?: No. We sit on your side of the table while they deliver. Our job is to make sure the decisions being made now still make sense long after they have gone.
What do we get out of it?: Decisions made with how Workday will actually be governed and operated after go-live in mind, rather than discovered afterwards, which is when they become expensive.

Start before it gets expensive.

The readiness toolkit covers eight dimensions worth being honest about before an implementation makes the decision for you. If you would rather talk it through, we can do that instead.

Get the Readiness Toolkit Book a strategy call

Both free. The toolkit needs no sales call.