For organizations seeking to unlock the full potential of their Workday ecosystem, a strategic focus on several key elements throughout the implementation process is critical.
We recently sat down with Robert Myres, an expert Workday Program Manager, to discuss the importance of collaborative engagement between the Program Manager and the client’s internal teams, as well as strategic project staffing and continuous executive support. With more than 10 years in the program management space, Robert shares key insights from firsthand experience, ensuring your organization can maximize your Workday investment and achieve a successful implementation.
This case study will explore these essential considerations, emphasizing the proactive role of a dedicated Client Advocate, the crucial decisions involved in Project Staffing, and the commitment required from Executive Support—all of which are instrumental in navigating the complexities and ensuring a seamless, high-value Workday implementation.
Navigating the Workday Implementation Journey
Implementing a new Workday program marks a pivotal moment for organizations, offering transformative improvements in how HR and finance operations are managed. It enables businesses to streamline processes, enhance insights, and ultimately, drive significant efficiency across the enterprise. However, the journey to new Workday systems is often fraught with the inherent challenges of large-scale digital transformations, including managing intricate timelines, controlling substantial costs, and navigating immense complexity.
A successful implementation, which ultimately maximizes return on investment and minimizes disruption to existing processes, hinges on a greater focus on specific critical areas and considerations. This success is dependent on three core pillars: the indispensable role of a dedicated Client Advocate, the strategic decisions around Project Staffing, and the importance of continuous Executive Support.
The Indispensable Role of an Early Client Advocate
By engaging a Workday Program Manager early in the implementation process, you gain a strong advocate for your organization’s own interests and future plans. An experienced Program Manager provides the knowledge, expertise, and oversight necessary to ensure implementation timelines and budgets are met and protects against potentially deceptive practices by system implementation teams or other key stakeholders.
In addition to navigating stringent budget and time constraints, involving a Program Manager early enables the diligent oversight of the system implementer (SI) from Day One. This means that your internal teams can avoid costly budget overruns and ensure the external system implementation team delivers according to quality standards outlined in their Statement of Work (SOW). With the proactive support of a capable Program Manager (also known as a Client Advocate), you can ensure that all critical decisions are made with an effective checks and balances approach, and nothing slips through the cracks on either the internal or external side of the project.
Strategic Project Staffing and Budget Management
Before the implementation project begins, company executives and other relevant stakeholders should conduct a comprehensive assessment of the capabilities of each proposed project team member, ensuring they have the right skills and availability to commit fully to the project. This assessment of core knowledge, competencies, and ability to fully commit to the project ensures a current, comprehensive internal staffing plan, leading to better project management throughout each phase.
Why Backfill Resources?
System implementers typically recommend involving backfill resources, temporary resources brought on to perform business-as-usual (BAU) work to create capacity for full-time employees to be fully available for the project, to augment specific areas of the new Workday platform or the project plan. When primarily leveraging backfill support for critical project needs, organizations should engage resources early enough to allow them to learn their new roles and the full-time employee (FTE) can effectively transfer their BAU responsibilities.
Proactively engaging backfill resources early in the process is crucial, allowing them ample time to learn their new roles and absorb business-as-usual responsibilities, thereby ensuring full-time employees can dedicate themselves entirely to the Workday project.
Why Frontfill Resources?
Equally important, and often overlooked by SIs, are frontfill resources, working side-by-side with the client’s full-time employees to complete the work responsibilities assigned to the client side of the project team. Engaging frontfill resources early in the project is critical, as project work differs significantly from BAU work in most organizations, often requiring a higher pace and intensity to meet project deadlines.
Here are a few critical reasons to engage frontfill resources in your implementation project:
- Volume of work: The client side of the project often requires a larger volume of work than most resources will be able to manage without assistance, including configuration workbooks, data mapping, data validation, test scripts and scenarios, testing, deployment planning, cutover, and hypercare.
- Data analysis: Engaging experienced, capable client-side resources facilitates quicker data analysis and more responsible decision-making during the project design phase. Most full-time employees are not accustomed to making process-related decisions at the quick pace required for an urgent project.
- Knowledge transfer: Frontfill resources facilitate effective knowledge transfer in a more meaningful way than typical SI resources. When an implementation project is live, SI leads often become entrenched in their own tasks, allowing some of the critical knowledge transfer to slip through the cracks. Consequently, most of the knowledge transfer for the new Workday application will come from the frontfill resources.
- Post-Go-Live support: Frontfill resources are often better suited and more cost-effective for providing critical ongoing support for the client’s new Workday system than extending SI resources.
Crucial Executive Support and Alignment
To ensure critical project alignment between company executives, internal teams, and external resources, the Program Manager and their responsibilities should be assigned to the primary executive sponsor, often the CIO, CFO, or CHRO. The Program Manager and their assigned executive sponsor should meet regularly to outline relevant touchpoints, enabling them to quickly and effectively address issues or risks that arise.
Often, when program managers report to lower-tier managers, such as Directors or Senior Directors of a specific product or company area, priorities and responsibilities can become misaligned, compromising the speed of work and overall decision-making. By ensuring an efficient reporting structure between the Program Manager and the Executive Sponsor, clients can leverage real-time executive views and avoid any debate at lower leadership levels.
Facilitating direct executive sponsorship and support for critical project objectives ensures the actual importance of the new Workday program is adequately conveyed to the rest of the organization. This level of executive support must be maintained throughout the entire project lifecycle, providing more direct and tailored guidance than the occasional steering committee meeting.
Getting Started with Our Workday Experts
Surety Systems brings deep technical proficiency in the comprehensive Workday suite and extensive real-world project management experience, including expertise in strategic staffing and ensuring robust executive alignment throughout key implementation project phases.
Our senior-level Workday consultants partner directly with your internal teams, offering strategic advisory and hands-on support custom-tailored to your company’s unique goals and challenges in implementing a new Workday system.
From initial planning and configuration to seamless integration and long-term optimization, we’re here to ensure your Workday projects run smoothly, risks are mitigated, and you can maximize your overall Workday investment.
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For more information about our Workday consulting services or to get started on a project with our team, contact us today.
