Your top Workday Phase X questions answered
Whether you are going through an acquisition or divestiture, rolling out Workday in a new country, or expanding your Workday footprint with new modules, Phase X projects can help to drive efficiency and maximise Workday ROI. Like all deployments though, Phase X projects take careful planning and execution to mitigate the impact of change on your configuration and end users. Here, we look at some top questions about Phase X deployment from across the Workday ecosystem, and explore how you can ensure your project goes smoothly.
Managing change during Phase X deployments
How do we effectively manage the impact of a Phase X deployment on our existing Workday configuration?
As Workday is unique to your business, configuration and business processes can become complex, so changes in one area could cause unforseen impacts in another part of your tenant. In the case of a Phase X project, the change is substantial and therefore, it’s important to mitigate the risk of these impacts. A good deployment requires:
A clearly defined and well-equipped project team: The project team for your Phase X deployment should have visibility to all major changes in the Production tenant so that they can configure their tenant, understand the potential conflicts and plan key project activities accordingly.
This team should work closely with your usual Workday support team, to maintain an understanding of how any major changes on either side could impact the deployment.
A comprehensive Phase X testing strategy: This should look at the impact your design decisions will have on your business area and entire production tenant. A good strategy should detail how to minimise the workload for your team as well as reducing the impact on the business to ensure a smooth Phase X deployment. Your strategy should also highlight the need for other resources such as automated testing and security tools to further minimise any impacts.
This is our first Phase X deployment, how do we mitigate the impact on our teams internally?
Phase X deployments can be major business projects, with new systems replacing legacy software, input required from across the business and upskilling required throughout the workforce. Effectively managing this change requires thorough planning and careful consideration of the potential impact on the business as a whole.
Initially, it is important to ensure your executive team is aligned to the outcomes you’ve defined. This will help create a top-down strategic vision. Ultimately, this helps leadership to understand resource requirements and plan for how operations and business processes will need to evolve to work with your new software solution.
On the ‘front line’ a well-organised, empowered, internal team makes it much easier to support new technology. This means thorough project governance is a must, with clear roles and key decision makers for each function identified. Finally, a good deployment partner is the one of the best tools you can have, so find an experienced Workday partner who understands your business’ needs.
For even greater efficiency, you can identify ‘change champions’ across different functions, these are advocates that can help to drive change and make your Phase X deployment a success.
Operating in a highly regulated industry means we hold huge amounts of employee data, how do we efficiently migrate this data?
High quality, timely, and secure data extraction is paramount to the success of any Workday project. Working with business owners, SMEs and IT teams to identify sources of data and assess quality and risk early will help to minimise the impact this has on your deployment timeline.
Taking the time during to review, cleanse and organise data will provide long-term benefits with more accurate data, building trust with end users as they begin to use Workday for the first time. Additionally, this is also a chance to harmonise data sets to help drive consistency in the business and get the most out of reporting and analytics.
Growing Workday without growing your team
How do we know the time and resources that need to be dedicated to regression testing during this deployment?
Regression testing your existing Workday configuration is one of the most time-consuming aspects of any Phase X deployment. Depending on the scope of your project, this may involve input from a variety of business leaders and SMEs along with HRIS and IT team members. This effort has the potential to cause delays in your testing schedule, with knock-on effects on your roadmap.
Make sure you know when your team will be required and plan appropriately. Key stages such as Design, Customer Confirmation, Testing and Go-Live require a high availability of SMEs. Additionally, there can also be overlaps between testing requirements during phases like training, data analysis and privacy/security so it’s important to plan in advance for this.
Can automated testing help to mitigate these issues?
While Phase X deployment testing can be complex and time-consuming, it’s absolutely necessary for success. Even with comprehensive planning, communication, and a well-devised strategy, the quality of test coverage is also critical.
Automation is vital to achieve comprehensive test coverage, helping to deliver consistent, high quality and repeatable processes, eliminate ‘human error’, and simultaneously reduce costs, time and overall testing effort.
Solutions like Kainos Smart Test can cut testing time from weeks to hours, by automatically running tests on every BP. As a result of this, your test strategy becomes as simple as reviewing the results and resolving issues.
With intelligent automation, teams are able to be confident in the integrity of critical processes and your team can focus on getting the most out of your new Workday deployment and maximising value.
Secure and comply from beginning to end
How do we minimise the risk of data exposure during Phase X testing?
A Phase X deployment will naturally mean more external and internal access in your non-production tenants. An automated solution like Kainos Smart Shield allows testers to have elevated access to test end to end, while masking sensitive data. Not only does this protect PII but also allows your project team to more efficiently deploy Phase X projects with more thorough testing.
We need to train staff on how to use our new Workday modules, how can we do this without exposing sensitive data and PII?
Training is an important aspect to support change management and ensure the success of any Workday project. Training helps with end-user experience, improves user adoption and maximises the value of your investment.
In the long term, effective training will make the process for further Workday expansion easier by demonstrating the value of Phase X projects to business leaders.
However, there is normally a trade-off between providing training on real-life scenarios and protecting sensitive data. This isn’t the only option, intelligent data masking tools like Smart Shield can mask sensitive and business critical data across the tenant to create a safe environment for users to explore and learn, whilst data privacy is protected.
Do I need to utilise automation for a successful Phase X project?
Any successful Phase X project requires several factors working in conjunction to be successful, from business leadership support to user adoption, each aspect requires strong management, expert knowledge and adequate resources.
Automated solutions provide support at every stage of the Phase X journey, reducing the stress on your project team, providing quality assurance and enhancing compliance from the start of your project and after go-live.