Common Workday Implementation Issues & how to address them

Get the most out of your cloud HR investment by avoiding or fixing these common Workday implementation issues. This is part one of a two-part series.

It’s easy to succumb to standard project pitfalls when approaching a Workday implementation. Understanding time and budget are crucial inputs to determining project success, and their impact becomes especially pronounced with longer Workday implementations that average more than eight months.

Following are some common Workday Implementation Issues

Mistake #1: Failing to define the scope and complexity of project

To effectively plan your Workday implementation, it’s crucial to clearly define the scope and complexity of the project. Specifying design requirements from the start helps avoid delays and confusion.

A vague scope can lead to miscommunication and require scope adjustments through change orders. Additionally, successful implementation depends on recognizing the importance of thorough preparation.

Accurately representing both functional and technical requirements within the cloud configuration is key to ensuring a smooth and failure-free deployment of Workday.

Mistake #2: Failing to define the needs of each Workday implementation phase upfront

Improve your implementation planning by understanding and defining the needs for each Workday implementation phase upfront.

Whether using a traditional waterfall methodology, a faster agile method, or a hybrid approach, it’s important to clearly outline the required activities and desired outcomes from each project phase to ensure coverage of all organizational needs.

Beyond the explicit technology requirements, it’s crucial to align on testing objectives, change management strategy, and always be mindful that HR technology changes involve a wide-scale deployment that typically impacts a company’s entire user population.

Keeping an eye on the end goal also allows for better deployment planning and knowledge transfer, enabling internal workers to effectively manage and use the new HR system.

Often, due to the easy-to-use reputation cloud technology has, companies find themselves underestimating the effort needed to support knowledge transfer and product adoption. Ending an implementation with big gaps in knowledge and ongoing usage support can be a costly mistake in terms of resources and the company’s bottom line.

Mistake #3: Failing to understand your existing integration system

A key activity to prepare for your Workday implementation and reduce failures is to analyze and understand the existing integration system landscape.

By completing this effort in advance of the workday implementation, you can free time for your resources to address optimization and streamline your data flows between systems instead of settling for replicating the current state, even if a better solution is available.

This lack of flexibility and preparation during implementation prevents organizations from realizing the full benefit of their investment in cloud technology by replicating existing issues with new systems.

Additionally, this up-front effort will allow you to accurately scope the time and requirements needed for integration work and give vendors time to adapt to new Workday integrations and potential optimizations. It’s important to develop a standard taxonomy across your data sources to prepare for data migration and ensure clean high-quality data.

Mistake #4: Failing to create an Workday implementation strategy

It’s important to keep in mind that while your project team will become increasingly familiar with the new technology over the course of the implementation, your user population will need an adoption planning strategy to ensure a smooth and painless transition to Workday.

With companies currently increasing their remote employee populations, being inclusive of different training and communication approaches becomes a top priority.

As all workers are potentially impacted by the adoption of a new HR system, consider cross-functional departments, contractors, and other partners as impacted populations during your go-live preparations.

Important tips on how to prevent workday implementation Issues

1. Correct implementation of resources:

Managing a Workday system requires deep domain expertise in functional business processes including end-to-end design dependencies with other departments, as well as compliance and security maintenance.

In this difficult landscape, it’s important to staff your implementation project with the right resources. They should have the ability to manage complex situations, distill and document requirements.

Additionally, they should also understand where optimizations are necessary to support the Workday implementation.

2. Communication across stakeholders is key

If your organization is considering or preparing for a move to Workday, consider the importance of clear communication and collaboration across impacted stakeholders.

In the best possible circumstances, these stakeholders are engaged well before the start of a Workday implementation so that plans can be communicated repeatedly both within and across departments.

This will allow for enough lead time to identify relevant needs and concerns as well as get confirmed buy-in from organizational leadership.

3. Understand internal skills and expertise

As you prepare these impacted groups, consider the project resources and documentation required to ensure successful implementation. You may need additional Workday training for some resources, which requires time and careful coordination to avoid gaps.

Assess the existing skills and expertise within the organization and leverage them for the ongoing management of an HR system like Workday. Organizations typically structure Workday support in a tiered model, strengthened by good documentation and effective change management.

4. Reduce manual efforts with automation

To make the most effective use of your resources, you can also consider bringing in external Workday experts to help scope and architect your implementation.

Many customers have seen success pursuing automation solutions that reduce required manual efforts at key crunch times in the Workday implementation.

This can free valuable time for resources to spend on more strategic work, or to address unexpected issues as they come up throughout the implementation.

How SimplrOps helps in resolving Workday implementation Issues

Workday is a powerful but complicated tool that needs professional expertise to ensure its full leverage. That’s when SimplrOps steps in. Our solution will automate your Workday handling processes including configuration, reviewing features, generating reports, managing release updates etc.

Our portal will provide you a comprehensive snapshot of the information thats important for you, eliminating your manual efforts and time spent on Workday.

All in all, SimplrOps enables you to focus on strategic growth while taking your load off from the operational details.

Don’t believe us? Take a demo with our expert and see it for yourself:

Common Workday Implementation Issues and How to Address Them