Get the most out of your cloud HR investment by avoiding or fixing these common Workday implementation failures. This is part two of a two-part series: check out the first two mistakes to avoid here
Preparing for your Workday implementation is an essential component to maximize your cloud investment. As you continue your planning, keep these tips in mind.
Mistake #3: Failing to understand your existing integration system landscape
A key activity to prepare for your Workday implementation and reduce failures is to analyze and understand the existing integration system landscape. Time is often spent during the implementation unwinding previous design decisions that were made with integrated systems. By completing this effort in advance of the 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.
In coordination with downstream systems preparation, it’s equally important to have a clear, documented understanding of data sources needed for conversion activities. Dealing with HR data can come with additional complexities within data mapping, data access, and data governance. This is only further complicated for global organizations. 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 adoption 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. All workers are potentially impacted by the adoption of a new HR system, so consider cross-functional departments, contractors, and other partners as impacted populations during your go-live preparations.
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.
Understand internal skills and expertise
Consider as you prepare these impacted groups the various project resources and documentation that will be required to ensure a successful implementation. Additional Workday training may be required for some of these resources, which takes time and planning to coordinate so there’s no gap. Given the ongoing management needs of an HR system like Workday, it’s important to understand the existing skills and expertise that can be leveraged within the organization. Workday support organizations are commonly built in a tiered model and are bolstered by good documentation and change management.
Reduce manual efforts with automation solutions
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.
Overall, the biggest key to avoiding common Workday implementation failures is adequate preparation.
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Common Workday Implementation Failures Part 1
Get the most out of your cloud HR investment by avoiding or fixing these common Workday implementation failures.