Having a system like Workday can be beneficial in reducing risk for error, increasing employee productivity, and maximizing operational efficiency. But, what happens when your internal team or legacy system isn’t prepared to withstand a change as impactful as implementing Workday?
This is where Workday Testing comes in.
Read on to learn more about how increased testing functionality and an organized Workday test environment can benefit you, as well as where our team of Workday consultants can come in to help optimize your Workday testing operations.
What is Workday Testing?
Workday Testing provides the tools needed to ensure your Workday applications are aligned with your business needs and objectives, assure system compatibility and performance, and realize the full value of your Workday solutions. This way, your Workday software can keep up with changes across your organization and the industry as a whole and reduce risk for errors in the long run.
How Does Workday Test Automation Work?
Workday software comes pre-built into the platform and is tested and approved by their own software engineers and developers. So, when your team conducts Workday testing, you’re not checking to see if the software itself works, you’re ensuring the software fits your individual business needs. This allows users to check system compatibility and operational ability before the go-live date.
Testing is also a continuous process, lasting long after your go-live date. System configurations need to be modified to fit your company’s changing needs, support a growing employee base, and protect your team from error-prone processes and unexpected issues within the system.
Why is it Important to Test Workday?
Testing Workday functionality and compatibility with your current internal and third-party systems not only ensures that your critical business processes are operating as planned, but it also maximizes business efficiency by offering seamless integration from day one.
Workday Testing offers a fool-proof way to make sure data security, integrations, reporting, and normal system processes are operating as efficiently as possible – saving you time, money, and quite a few headaches in the long run.
Here are a few of the main end-to-end-testing scenarios to keep in mind:
Planning and developing Workday before go-live.
As market trends and business needs change, organizations need better systems to be able to keep up and hold their own in the industry.
But, with a new software comes new requirements, processes, integrations, and roles for employees. Outlined testing strategies give your technology teams more information and time to prepare before their launch date rolls around.
Customizing Workday apps for increased functionality.
It’s no secret that as your business needs grow and change, your technology will too. need to change as well. Whether that involves integrating new Workday modules or adding third-party tools to the mix, testing is an essential piece of the puzzle.
Adding new custom applications or integrations to your Workday platform is important in keeping up with changing business requirements, but without testing each time, your business process functionality will suffer.
Fortunately, Workday offers test management tools that allow your team to test system functionality for each and every change made.
Modifying system operations to keep up with Workday updates.
Because Workday is an ever-changing software made to keep up with business needs, the company has two major releases each year that go through extensive testing from the Workday team, but also require testing by internal teams.
Testing new updates to your Workday platform not only ensures your business processes didn’t suffer any unexpected damage with the update, but it also maintains confidence that your system will still operate as planned once the release date arrives.
Workday Testing Steps
The first step in testing a new or improved Workday platform is deciding whether you will conduct manual testing or use Workday automated testing to speed up your testing processes.
While sticking to manual testing can seem comfortable and convenient for your internal team, running multiple tests manually can lead to human error, lost opportunity, and plenty of lost time. With Workday test automation, multiple tests can be run at the same time (and as efficiently as possible), leading to decreased testing costs and risk to your system efficiency and increased availability of business resources.
Depending on the size of your organization and the current roles of your employees, your full time staff may be able to handle all things testing on their own. For those who may not have the full-time capabilities to handle testing requirements, experts from other departments, like human resources (HR) or finance, or external Workday experts may need to be called in.
And, now that you’ve determined your testing strategy and the team behind the testing, you’re ready for the real-deal steps of Workday’s Deployment Methodology. The five distinct phases of Workday deployment include Planning, Architecture, Configuration and Prototyping, Testing, and Deployment.
Main Types of Testing
Here are the main types of testing conducted within your Workday platform:
1) Workday Security Testing
Security testing is important in ensuring that all data within your Workday system and beyond is safe and secure, no matter how many changes or updates the platform goes through.
Security testing in Workday involves checking configuration capabilities for role and user-based security and ensuring that permissions are aligned with your company’s security requirements.
2) Workday Integration Testing
Integration testing requires collaboration between your internal Workday team, your IT team, and any external vendors or partners you have.
It involves testing integrations to ensure your third-party integration tools are working with your Workday system, and the data being input and output between those systems is in line with system configurations.
3) Workday User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
UAT helps end users validate your Workday system by ensuring that your Workday platform is built and maintained properly.
While most issues and defects with the system will have already been taken care of by the time UAT is conducted, reviewing your Workday processes and development is important in offering critical feedback and increasing the exposure of Workday within your business and beyond.
4) Workday Payroll Parallel Testing
Connecting separate systems, like HCM and Payroll, in your company is an important part of optimizing business processes. Workday Payroll Parallel testing helps to align internal and external payroll processes and integrations with Workday.
This is especially useful in companies that use Workday for their payroll needs and another legacy system for other organizational needs. Testing the connection and interoperability between these systems ensures Workday processes meet the same requirements as those previously configured in your legacy application.
5) Workday Continuous Testing
While the testing process is often thought of only as pre-implementation prep, end-to-end testing actually requires the continuous maintenance and updating of your Workday system throughout the full employee and company life cycle.
End-to-end testing allows users to make sure their full chain of operations is working together from day one – ensuring organized and pre-arranged testing activities and optimized business processes every step of the way.
Best Workday Testing Practices
Now that you’re up to speed on all of the Workday testing information, let’s take a look at the best strategies to help ensure that you’re getting the most out of your testing endeavors…
User Experience
Making sure that your Workday system runs smoothly is a critical step in the testing process, because, if executed well, Workday can make all the difference when it comes to managing and optimizing your core business operations.
Testing ensures that employees feel comfortable using features and functions across their Workday platform, improving employee performance, engagement, and productivity across the board.
Specific Customization Impact
Workday can be customized in many ways, making it easier for customers to configure their Workday solutions to fit their needs and leverage testing functionality to ensure their system operates as expected.
And, any time a new feature is integrated into your Workday system, test scripts should be created to ensure your software is always operating at peak performance.
Continuous Release
With any updates or new releases in your Workday software, advanced testing capabilities simplify the integration process for new features or components and makes it easier for companies to remain competitive over time.
And, by leveraging testing functionality, Workday customers can ensure new releases or changes to their Workday platform keep your overall business process seamless.
How Can We Help?
Managing business requirements and Workday tools throughout every testing phase can seem like a bit of a daunting task. If you’re feeling overwhelmed with anything and everything to do with Workday Testing, no need to worry.
Our team of senior-level Workday consultants have you covered!
Getting Started with Our Team
Need an extra hand in building a testing plan that will fit all your needs? Our team can help. Need help managing critical assets and conducting exploratory testing within your Workday system? They’re experts in that too.
Whether you have specific testing needs or need extra support for any other Workday-related needs, Surety Systems is here to help you.
And, even better, we’ve included a sample profile of one of our Workday Testing consultants to give you a better idea of what to expect when partnering with us…
Surety Senior Workday Testing Consultant
- 20+ years of testing experience
- Has acted as Workday System Tester for Core HCM, Payroll, Talent Mgmt, Compensation, Benefits, Time & Attendance, Reporting, and Security Admin
- Very comfortable creating test plans, test approaches, scrips, etc.
- Experience developing, validating, and testing custom reports
- Has been in HRIS space for almost 25 years
Like what you see? Contact us today to get started!
