As your business and employee base grows, it’s common to add more HR software as needed to manage your “people” operations. Each tool serves a purpose and fulfills a specific need, but before you know it, all of those technologies you brought on to save time can start leading to more manual work.
If this sounds like a familiar problem, you’re not alone. Tools like Workday and Kronos can do wonders for your business, but treating them as separate machines you turn to when they’re needed will never be as effective as integrating them together.
So if your solutions need a little integration TLC, you’ve come to the right place. This article will cover the key features of each system and how Workday Kronos integrations can help you achieve end-to-end human capital management (HCM) that benefits your entire workforce.
Let’s get started.
What is Workday?
The Workday Enterprise Management Cloud is an entirely cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that allows users to keep track of their organizational solutions for human capital management (HCM), financial management, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and spend management.
Workday offers easy-to-use applications and modules that help organizations optimize their HR software and business processes, including payroll, recruiting, benefits administration, talent and overall performance management, learning, compensation, data conversion, and more.
With Workday’s advanced capabilities and integration features, users are able to manage their data securely in one system, offer real-time insights, and allow for seamless integration between internal Workday applications and external systems, like Kronos.
Key Features and Benefits
- Increased visibility into important data, insights, and predictive analytics
- Reduced costs from a single-system approach
- More engaged and empowered employees and managers
- Seamless integration with internal and external systems and applications
- Increased speed and productivity
- High-quality applications, modules, and integration tools
- Regular HR software updates and upgrades to optimize business processes
- Consistent functionality across global workforces
Workday understands that people are the heart of all organizations, and they should be the focus of business software. Even better, its diverse functionality and customizable applications allow for it to be used in companies of many different sizes, industries, and locations with the same focus – people.
What is Kronos?
Kronos Workforce Management offers multiple different tools that help manage employee resources and optimize business processes with a single technology interface.
Kronos, now part of the Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG) allows users to choose from three main workforce management systems: Kronos Workforce Central, Kronos Workforce Ready, and Kronos Dimensions. Each of these systems holds a different purpose within your organization but can be easily integrated with other applications and systems, like Workday, to make the most out of your ERP system.
Key Features and Benefits of Kronos Workforce
Kronos Workforce Central
Kronos Workforce Central is an easy-to-use workforce management interface that allows employees to access self-service portals with one click and gives managers increased visibility into data insights and employee dashboards. The Kronos Workforce Central solution meets the needs of many different industries and offers robust features to withstand change in the long run:
- Time & Labor Management
- Real-time Scheduling
- Data Collection & Management
- Absence Management
Kronos Workforce Ready
Kronos Workforce Ready is a cloud-based HCM system that helps companies automate their business processes and integrate their workforce from recruiting to time-tracking, absence management, and more. It includes a full suite of products with various features and functionality:
- People Analytics
- Talent Acquisition and Applicant Tracking
- Performance Management
- Time Keeping
- Employee Leave Management
Kronos Workforce Dimensions
Kronos Dimensions is the latest upgrade to the system, offering a more accessible cloud system to handle all of your HR, payroll, time tracking, and attendance needs. This upgraded UKG system gives users increased capability within the system and access to more complex features:
- Timekeeping & Scheduling
- HR
- Data Collection & Automation
- Payroll & Benefits Administration
- Analytics & Reporting
Benefits of Kronos Workforce System Integration
If you’ve been running two systems like Workday and Kronos in conjunction with each other for a while now, you may be thinking that you’re getting everything that you need out of each of them.
Sure, these systems could be operating just fine for your company and its needs, but let’s take a closer look at some of the main benefits of system integration that could help you enhance your workforce management systems even more.
Unified Source of Truth
By using more than one system to carry out business processes, there’s extra room left for data discrepancies, lost information, and disagreements between systems, oftentimes leading to time, money, and important resources lost.
With the single source of truth that comes with integrating your systems, all of your data is able to be automatically synced between each system, leaving much less opportunity for errors or issues with important employee data.
Increased Efficiency and Accuracy of Operations
Integrating your workforce systems not only automates your business processes, but it also limits the risk for human error by offering a solution that takes the place of manual data entry, evaluation, and conversion.
This gives your employees a lighter workload on the data management front, leaving them more time to focus on things that enhance their customer experience and optimize business operations as a whole.
Better Time Management
One of the most time consuming parts of using a workforce management system like Workday or Kronos is data management. Instead of having employees devote the majority of their time to checking data accuracy and converting each data source from one system to the other, integrated systems do this for you.
That way, your employees, managers, and executives have more time and better data to evaluate business systems and make better decisions to maximize operations, including human resources, finance, payroll, and everything in between.
Where to Integrate Workday and Kronos
Let’s talk now about how you can extend the Workday HCM application through its prebuilt connections to Kronos Time and Scheduling solution. These integrations are deployed in the Workday cloud, so doing so means you also gain all the benefits of a managed application. Here are just a couple of ways you can integrate these robust solutions:
Human Resource Management
Kronos Workforce Timekeeper connector supplements Workday HCM by syncing Workday employee information with Kronos, allowing employees to access the Kronos Workforce Timekeeper application.
This way, your organization can take advantage of the timekeeping functionality offered in Kronos, while still keeping all of your Human Resource Management data in a single, integrated system. All joint customers, regardless of the payroll system they use, can take advantage of this integration to optimize both their timekeeping and HCM processes.
Payroll
Kronos Workforce Timekeeper connector transfers time captured in the Kronos Workforce Timekeeper application into Workday Payroll.
This integration not only makes timekeeping and absence management easier, but it also minimizes the risk of mismatched or incorrect time and payroll information by keeping it all integrated in one place. In addition, joint customers can take advantage of other features such as outbound integration that forwards worker information from Workday to Kronos automatically or as needed.
Potential Workday and Kronos Use Case
To explain how Kronos and Workday can work better together, let’s demonstrate a possible use case. Our hypothetical company is in the manufacturing industry—let’s call it XYZ Systems—and most of its workforce is paid hourly through union contracts. XYZ Systems uses Workday to manage its HCM data, including time-off balances and payroll information. They also use Kronos Time and Scheduling for hourly employee tracking.
Employees enter their time-off requests in Kronos, but in order to see time-off balances in Workday, XYZ Systems has to frequently synchronize the two systems to make sure there were no discrepancies. Similarly, they run into a similar issue when it comes to the working hours logged in Kronos—they have to put in a lot of manual work to get the core payroll information from Workday to make sure that everything comes out as it should and employees are paid correctly for their time.
In this case, a Workday Kronos integration would help XYZ Systems solve these issues. Specifically, these three integrations:
- Payroll input connector: Integrating Kronos to Workday would help manage hours and amounts to pay through payroll.
- Employee demographic connector: Integrating Workday to Kronos would capture employee lifecycle changes in Kronos.
- Absence balance connector: Integrating Workday to Kronos would help balances from Kronos sync automatically and continuously.
Integrations (AKA “How to Get Your Solutions to Play Nicely”)
Understanding Workday integration is essential for any modern business. Without connected systems, you’ll waste time and money on manual tasks that could easily be automated, not to mention potentially putting your business at risk from costly manual errors.
Less time spent checking and re-checking information from both systems to ensure data is synced and systems are functioning properly leaves more time to focus on increasing employee engagement, focusing on a “people-first” business mindset, and optimizing the employee experience and, in turn, your overall business processes.
How Can We Help?
If your organization is ready to automate your HCM business processes by integrating Workday and Kronos, Surety Systems can help. Our senior-level Kronos consulting team and senior-level Workday consulting team can work with your organization to determine the integrations you need to succeed and then help you implement them smoothly.
Our experts can also partner with you for any other Workday or Kronos projects you may have, including full implementations, training, or support. Want a sneak peek into who you could work with if you partner with us? Luckily, we’ve included a snapshot of one of our top Kronos Workday consultants.
Surety Senior Kronos Workday Consultant
- 20+ years of ERP Project Management experience
- 12+ years of application / consulting experience with Workday and Kronos
- Has experience leading Kronos implementations and spearheading testing
- Experience within the HCM, Payroll, and Financials modules with Workday
- Prior hands-on application consulting before moving to PM work
Contact us today to learn more and get started.
