Traditional support manages the queue.
We advance the roadmap.
A fractional Workday team that extends your own, senior specialists covering the modules you cannot justify hiring for, led by someone who owns the outcome rather than the ticket count.
The ticket is the wrong unit of work.
A ticketing model optimizes for closing things. It has to, because that is what it is measured on. Nothing in it is designed to ask why the same thing keeps arriving.
| Aspect | Ticket-led support | An embedded pod |
|---|---|---|
| Measured on | Tickets closed, response times met | Whether the same issue comes back |
| Who you get | Whoever is on rotation | Named senior specialists who know your tenant |
| Scope | What fits the contract | What the roadmap needs next |
| Backlog | Worked in the order it arrived | Sequenced by business impact and dependency |
| Knowledge | Leaves when the contract does | Documented and handed to your team |
Why the old model cannot get you there
A different person every time
Whoever is free picks it up. They read the ticket, not the eighteen months of decisions behind it, so the same context gets rebuilt from scratch on every request.
No standing inside your governance
A queue sits outside how you approve, prioritize and release. Anything that needs a decision rather than a fix stops at the edge of the contract.
Optimized for closing, not for asking why
Response and resolution times are the measure, so nothing in the model is paid to notice that the same issue has now arrived four times.
Scope is the contract, not the roadmap
What you need next year is not in the statement of work, so the platform holds its position while the business moves on around it.
Not a vendor. An extension of your team.
A pod is a fractional team built around the gaps in yours. It has a lead who owns the account, and specialists covering only what you do not already cover.
01A lead who owns the account
Whichever discipline the engagement actually runs on, HCM on one account and Financials on the next. They hold the relationship, oversee delivery across the pod, and are the person you call, not a rotating queue.
02Fractional specialists, not full-time hires
Each covering one or two modules. You get senior coverage on the areas that would not justify a full headcount on their own.
03Shaped around the gaps, not the org chart
Strong internally on learning and recruiting? Those seats are not in the pod. We cover what you do not, and nothing you already have.
04Scales with the team you are building
Some clients keep a full pod. Others run one for a year or two and then ramp down to a minimal set alongside the people they have hired.
Where a pod typically embeds. Which areas those are is decided by your team, not by us.
Stabilized after a rough deployment. Still advancing three phases later.
ACA came off a Workday Financials deployment in poor shape. The environment was unstable, processes were undocumented, and the internal team had not been equipped to run what they had been handed.
Kandor stabilized the environment, then did the work a deployment usually skips: ran change management properly, documented the processes, and trained the people who had to live with it, administrators, end users and leadership alike. Reporting was rebuilt on foundations that held.
That became an embedded pod rather than an exit. Since then the same team has stood up new modules and run a full architecture redesign across quote-to-cash and procurement.
“Kandor came in and rescued our Workday Financials deployment. Our system integrator left us in shambles. Kandor stabilized us in 90 days, then transitioned into the pod model and became a genuine extension of our team. Competent and reliable is how I would describe our Kandor pod.”
SVP and Controller, ACA Group
01Post-deployment
Unstable Financials · Undocumented processes · Team not equipped
02Stabilize and equip
Change management · Documentation · Training · Reporting rebuilt
03Advance the roadmap
New modules · Quote-to-cash and procurement redesign
“Doesn’t everything else you publish say we should hire internally?”
Yes. It does, and we mean it. So here is the line we hold ourselves to: if you keep a managed services provider around, it should be by design, because you want us in the work, not because nobody ever transferred enough knowledge for you to have a choice.
In practice that means the same knowledge transfer and documentation we would do on any other engagement, running the whole time. Some clients decide they want us permanently and keep a full pod. Others run one for a year or two, hire internally, and ramp us down to a minimal set that covers what they still cannot justify staffing. Both are fine. Being stuck with us is not.
Traditional support manages the queue. Kandor advances the roadmap.
Four things change, and you can measure all of them.
Every provider will tell you they are a partner rather than a vendor. These are the outcomes that phrase is supposed to mean, and the mechanism behind each one is on this page.
The backlog stops regenerating
Recurring work gets traced to what produces it rather than closed again. The queue shrinks because fewer things enter it, not because more people are working it.
The roadmap actually moves
The work that never gets started, because the queue always comes first, gets sequenced and delivered. That is the difference between holding position and advancing.
Coverage without the headcount
Specialists across HCM, Financials, Adaptive Planning and Payroll, at the fraction of each you actually need. No full-time hire for a module you use two days a month.
Knowledge stays on your side
Documented as we go, so the reason you renew is that the work is good, not that nobody else knows how your tenant is put together.
This fits if
- You are live on Workday and stable enough to think past the next ticket
- You have skills gaps you cannot justify filling with full-time hires
- You want a roadmap advanced, not just a queue managed
- You are building an internal team and need cover while you do it
It does not if
- You want the cheapest possible ticket throughput
- You are mid-implementation. That is advisory
- Your environment is still on fire; stabilization comes first
Your leadership team, and the bench behind them.
You get named senior leadership on the account 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.
intellectsOur 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
Common questions about Workday managed services
- What are Workday managed services?
- An ongoing arrangement where an external team runs some or all of your Workday environment alongside your own people. The term covers a wide range: at one end a ticket queue with a service-level agreement, at the other an embedded team that owns outcomes and advances the roadmap. The label is the same; what you get is not.
- What is the difference between managed services and traditional AMS support?
- AMS is measured on the queue: how fast tickets are answered and closed. Managed services as we run it is measured on whether the same issue comes back, and on what the platform can do a year from now that it could not do today. One is throughput, the other is direction.
- Should we outsource Workday support or hire in-house?
- Both, usually. Hire for the roles you need every day and can keep busy, which is normally an HRIS lead and analysts. Bring in fractional specialists for the modules where you need senior depth a few days a month, because a full-time hire for Adaptive Planning or Payroll you touch occasionally is expensive and hard to retain.
- What is a pod?
- A fractional team shaped around the gaps in yours. One named lead owns the account, and specialists cover only what you do not already cover. Strong internally on recruiting? That seat is not in the pod. It is built around your team rather than sold as a package.
- How much do Workday managed services cost?
- It depends on the modules covered and how much of each specialist you need, so anyone quoting a number before understanding that is guessing. What is worth comparing is the unit: a ticket-based contract prices throughput, a pod prices capability. Bring your current arrangement to a call and we will tell you plainly whether switching is worth it.
- How long is the commitment?
- Engagements run on a retainer with a fixed monthly allocation. The intent is not to lock you in, it is to give the same senior people continuity in your environment, which is what makes them worth more in month six than in month one.
- Do you want us dependent on you?
- No. Documentation and knowledge transfer are part of the work, not an exit deliverable. The goal is that you renew because the work is good, not because nobody else knows how your tenant is put together.
- Who is actually on the team?
- Named senior specialists from our bench, vetted personally by Seena, with a minimum of five years in the Workday ecosystem and most carrying both client-side and partner-side experience. You get the same people, not whoever is on rotation.
- Which Workday modules do you cover?
- Workday HCM including recruiting, talent and benefits; Workday Financials and reporting; Adaptive Planning; and Payroll, absence and time tracking across the US and Canada.
- Can you work alongside our existing support partner?
- Yes, and it is common. Many arrangements handle routine requests perfectly well but were never designed to resolve structural problems or move a roadmap. We become relevant where issues return after tickets close.
- We are still unstable after go-live. Is this the right service?
- Not yet. Stabilization comes first, because a pod added to an environment that is still generating problems just absorbs them. Once the foundations hold, the same team usually continues as the pod, which is how most of our managed-services engagements begin.
Tell us where the gaps are.
Thirty minutes to walk through what your team covers today, what it does not, and whether a pod is the right shape for the difference. If it is not, we will say so.
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