Introduction:
Workday is a cloud-based application that can serve in financial management and human capital management. Workday has been phenomenal over many years, expanding from the HCM application into ERP. It is one of the most powerful solutions in the present market, but it is always difficult to implement. The Workday implementation period varies from six months to fourteen months, and it can take up to 8.2 months in execution across any company. Any delay in the implementation can eat away at the ROI on the Workday investment. No one is willing to pay for the software they are not using. Avoiding the delays in the Workday adoption can make it very easy to evaluate the value of the application.
Given below are the top Workday Implementation Challenges:
- Lack of Communication and Collaboration
- Abysmally Defined Project Scope
- Inclusion of Right partners
- Vaguely Defined Process Without Priority
- Decision Log and Substandard Documentation
- Not Prioritizing Regular Tests and Quality Checks
- Reporting Issues and Data Migration
- Underestimating Time and Budget
1. Lack of Communication and Collaboration: Implementations may involve several teams that can often lead to few common communication issues:
- Usually, companies involve people from Finance, HR, and Information & Technology for Workday implementation. Also, they have to focus on involving some other functional groups such as the supply chain that can use the application.
- Most of the companies focus on leadership involvement while adopting Workday, and in the process, they forget about involving the end-users and mid-level managers.
- Involving the stakeholders at various stages of the implementation will ensure the execution of the task smoothly. It can also ensure the project is in line with the expectation of the leadership, but in most cases, it is overloaded.
- Often, companies overlook the significance of collaborating very effectively with consultants and service partners. It leads to a communication gap that might fail the project eventually.
2. Abysmally Defined Project Scope: Most of the time, the projects create a lot of chaos and eventually delay the implementation. Here are some factors that can affect the scope of the project:
Unclear Roadmap: Often, the implementations are delayed while the organizations don’t decide on the project’s primary objectives or create the roadmap without any involvement of the stakeholders.
Software Updates: In the span of 12 months, the application of Workday went via two major updates. For most companies, it can take almost 8 months to implement Workday, so we have to plan at least one update of the Workday between your implementation.
Organizational Changes: Often, the implementations are not about the technologies. It is the responsibilities and employees’ roles that change. Ensure to include plans for the job function or reporting structure changes.
3. Inclusion of Right partners: Probably, you will require help with the implementation. It would help if you considered the following things:
- Most of the time, organizations wait to recruit the Workday consultants in the stage of execution. They should be included from the planning stage to ensure good results.
- The service partners are not selected based on their expertise in a certain niche that could lead to problems, especially if the domain is new for the implementation of Workday.
4. Vaguely Defined Process Without Priority: Implementing new software needs updating the processes. Here are a few things that one should be aware of:
- Not creating the new processes in supporting the new workflow of Workday could lead to failure.
- Not optimizing the business processes and not changing them in line with the requirements of companies could lead to confusion.
- Not listing the applications of the third party with which Workday has to be integrated will make the project team’s job miserable in the implementation’s later stage.
- Usually, the non-existence of the process at each stage may create inconsistency.
5. Decision Log and Substandard Documentation: Documentation is considered an essential aspect of the Workday implementation that can help in guiding the customer to go via several complexities while we navigate the system.
- One of the issues that large corporations encounter is not making the decision log in the process of execution. A decision log might help in tracking the individual who is making the decision. It plays a vital role in the phase of execution.
- Instead of your own, using the general Workday documentation creates issues with the adoption. Your company may have various sets of processes that wouldn’t be mentioned in the Workday documentation by default.
6. Not Prioritizing Regular Tests and Quality Checks: If you want to wait until the end of the test, then there is a chance of delaying the implementation because:
- The rigid waterfall approach to project management in delaying the implementation because it doesn’t have enough flexibility.
- Suppose you wait until the end to run the quality checks and got an issue, then it will take a long time to fix the issue because you have to make the changes to the whole system.
7. Reporting Issues and Data Migration: For any company, one of the major challenges is the migration of data and report management. Although the company, in many cases, gives a high priority to the rise of the problem while pushing the present day in the new application, it creates some issues like:
- Mismatch of data and information
- Issues while uploading data in a specific format
- Data redundancy
- Loss of data points
8. Underestimating Time and Budget: Often, management is focusing on delivering projects quickly at the least cost but can create some issues if the user doesn’t accurately plan for the resources required for the large implementation. Given below are a few reasons for underestimating the timelines and budgets:
- Implementation and budgets timelines are mostly set based on the data received in the process of sales, but the salespeople don’t know the requirements of the company and its unique process. It is best to discuss the timeline with the project management team and the consultant to have a good set of expectations even from the beginning.
- Leaders can feel undue pressure to underestimate the time and cost associated with the Workday implementation.
- Without a Digital Adoption Platform in place can result in spending the cases, and it also impacts the adoption speed.
Conclusion:
Hope you got complete knowledge about the most common workday implementation challenges from the above. Still, you have any queries regarding Workday, feel free to contact Gologica or call 82969 60414.
