With strategic acquisitions including Peakon, VNDLY, and HiredScore over the past five years, Workday continues to broaden its suite of solutions, empowering organizations to address new business challenges and expand their operational capabilities.
Just as adding an extra room, wing, or floor to your home can make your home more functional and comfortable, growing your Workday footprint unlocks new capacity and features to support your organization’s evolving needs. Whether you just went live and are eyeing a phase-two project or have new SKUs included in your subscription renewal, it’s important think through how “the addition” will complement and enhance your “home.” Leveraging an experienced Application Management Services (AMS) partner can help you seamlessly integrate these new features while ensuring they align with your overall goals, optimizing your Workday investment.
Before you start a home addition, you align with everyone in the household on a shared vision—and do not forget those annoying permitting requirements! Expanding your Workday footprint works the same way. Begin by defining your business objectives, considering stakeholder goals, and clarifying which specific issues the new modules aim to address. Documenting this in a project charter keeps everyone on the same page and helps secure the executive support needed for success.
A home addition involves knowing who oversees what to avoid stepping on each other’s toes—or worse, creating costly mistakes. Similarly, even a single Workday module expansion needs clear roles and responsibilities. It is important to clearly define each person’s involvement including stakeholders, and any third parties. This can help you identify key gaps or needs to address before starting the project. It also prevents miscommunication and sets a solid foundation for project success.
No one wants to build an addition on a shaky foundation. If your home’s structure has begun to settle or shift, you might need to address it before starting the build. The same goes for Workday. Foundational elements of your current set up, like security design, job structure, and end-user adoption, may need shoring up before adding modules. Reviewing and refining these areas first can save you from complications down the road, especially if your organization has changed through rapid growth, acquisition, or tech adoption.
Adding onto your home means connecting utilities seamlessly to keep everything functional. Adding Workday modules is similar, as you need to understand and optimize touchpoints between systems. Workday provides numerous resources in Community to help navigate the "power of one" - illustrating the various touchpoints and considerations between modules.
Much like attempting a complex home renovation project on your own, trying to self-deploy new Workday capabilities without the right support can lead to challenges. I will never forget the time I tried to tile the bathroom floor by myself. Simple job I thought, I have this. Then the complicated tile cuts came and let us just leave it at there was a lot of improvising to finish the job. If I had brought in an expert prior, the project would have gone much smoother.
Consider partnering with Workday-certified deployment experts, like The Groove, who can provide advisory services or handle the full implementation. Read our blog, Finding Your Workday Application Management Services (AMS) Partner: A Marriage of Success, to learn more about what to consider when finding a partner.
Timing is everything! Your contractor would not schedule the concrete foundation to be poured right before a massive snowstorm. Similarly, time your Workday expansions carefully. Consider your key restriction periods, business events, and pre-existing roadmap that your company has and plan the rollout around that.
While certain zoning regulations may allow you to build that ultra-modern, glass addition in a traditional colonial neighborhood, it may not bode well for your resale value longer term. The same goes for rolling out new Workday capabilities - plan for change management for your end users and update your governance approach to account for managing ongoing enhancements to your addition.
By drawing parallels to home addition projects, you can apply similar best practices to make the most of your Workday investment and position your organization for long-term success. Contact The Groove to explore how Workday solutions can benefit your organization's goals. We will guide you through the "home expansion" process as expert remodelers, so you will fall in love with your new addition.