Ready for Your Workday Implementation? Don’t Overlook These Key Roles
More and more healthcare organizations are selecting and implementing Workday as their human capital management or enterprise resource planning solution. Workday is a flexible, cloud-based platform that can meet the modern HCM and ERP needs of major hospitals and health systems.
As with any large software project, however, organizations risk disruption during a Workday installation because the internal resources needed to support the project are often the same technical and functional resources responsible for the existing, legacy system that Workday will replace.
Our advice to any large organization moving to Workday is simple: don't underestimate the work effort, and plan on supplementing resources in the key areas below.
RICEF Services
The acronym RICEF stands for Reports, Interfaces, Conversions, Enhancements, and Forms. All of this information needs to be migrated from the legacy system into Workday. Common challenges associated with this process include data redundancy, mismatch or mapping errors, data loss, or formatting issues.
RICEF migration work is generally the responsibility of the organization installing Workday, not its certified Workday implementation partner. Because of the time and complexity of this work, and its importance to the success of a Workday implementation, RICEF migration is an area where organizations benefit from external expertise—and additional resources.
Internal Staff
It’s not uncommon for a major software project to last for more than a year and require the work of more than a dozen FTEs. Workday implementations are no exception. The impacted roles are typically in business (i.e., Finance and HR) and IT operations, and they involve both generalists and specialists.
While the employees in these roles focus on the Workday implementation, someone needs to take on their day-to-day responsibilities. Otherwise, that work simply won’t get done. Recruiting and hiring new employees with the expertise to backfill these roles can be a time-consuming process. Working with an organization that has a bench of skilled professionals to fill the seats of the full-time employees allows those employees to focus fully on Workday implementation.
Legacy Software Support
As the organization makes its transition to Workday, it’s essential to continue to support the legacy HCM or ERP software that Workday is replacing. These are mission-critical systems that cannot experience downtime and may need to remain in place for months after Workday is live.
As noted, current employees should focus on the Workday implementation. They need to become experts in the new software, not only for day-to-day support but also to train colleagues in various roles and functions throughout the company in Workday use. That’s why bringing in outside help to support legacy HCM or ERP software is a critical step for organizations implementing Workday. Experienced contractors can maintain the old software while the internal team prepares for Workday.
Project Management
While it’s valuable for current employees to devote their time to executing a Workday implementation, organizations benefit from hiring an outside project manager and staffing a project management office with PMs who have Workday experience.
There are many nuances to Workday implementation, from defining and prioritizing business processes to running tests at frequent intervals to creating decision logs and other forms of documentation. Scope, budget, and time are also important considerations. Experienced PMs can help an organizations balance these various factors over the course of a Workday implementation to minimize the impact on both day-to-day operations while helping the organization get the most out of the software in the long term.
Find Help
Workday implementation support from Healthcare IT Leaders can mean the difference between finishing on time and on budget and seeing unexpected delays and cost overruns. Finding experienced professionals to work alongside your staff throughout the process, supporting both your legacy software and your transition to Workday, will put you on the path to success.
Contact us today to learn more about how Healthcare IT Leaders can provide the right level of Workday implementation support for your organization.
