Seven People You Need on Your Workday Implementation Team

As your organization prepares for a Workday implementation project, you will need to begin assembling your implementation team. The implementation team will partner together to get your organization to go-live, so it is important to choose team members that understand the project and the business. Here are seven rock stars to have on your team to ensure a successful Workday deployment.

Executive Sponsor

Why is an executive sponsor important to an implementation project? The executive sponsor ensures project goals are aligned with the business strategy and that roadblocks to success are moved out of the way of the project team. Executive sponsors need to take the lead in building and maintaining leadership support of change, communicate a clear and realistic vision, and empower the project team to successfully complete the project. This person is an engaged stakeholder in the project and will hold themselves accountable for project success. The executive sponsor is often held accountable by the organization’s board of directors/trustees for the success of the project.

Project Sponsor

The project sponsor is the first level of escalation past the project manager and is the liaison between the project manager and team and the executive sponsor. The project sponsor is responsible for ensuring resources are available for the project, the budget is being managed properly, and the project manager is managing the project effectively.

Project Manager

The project manager (PM) is ultimately responsible for the successful delivery of the project, often inclusive of it being delivered on time and on budget. Additionally, the PM ensures that the right client-side resources are available to work on the project and understand what is needed of them. Project managers should help identify stakeholders who will be impacted by the change and work closely with the change management lead to communicate early and often. It is the PM’s job to define how the project will be executed according to internal processes and procedures and limit scope creep by managing effective change control.

SME Leads

Whether your deployment focuses on human capital management (HCM), financials, or the full suite, it is important to leverage your subject matter experts (SMEs) in the functional areas you will be implementing or those who will be affected by the project. Functional leads can provide guidance on current operations and necessary improvements, facilitate and aid decision-making with key stakeholders; be responsible for design and delivery of their subject area’s deliverables, and support process workstream.

Data Conversion Lead

One of the biggest challenges and most time-consuming parts of an implementation project can be the data conversion process to migrate data from legacy systems into Workday. Your organization likely has legacy data in a variety of unique sources and formats, and much of that data will need to be imported to Workday-specific templates that often require complex, non-traditional manipulation and formatting of the data to be loaded into Workday. While there are systems like Alteryx that can improve and speed up the data conversion process, you will still want to make sure you have someone leading the charge.

Testing Manager

Inadequate or lack of testing is one of the largest reasons for ERP project failure. Testing your new Workday system during deployment is critical to ensuring the solution works as intended and can deliver quick ROI. The testing manager will ensure you have tested everything that needs review and that all working properly.

After go-live, testing is still necessary for Workday’s product releases that happen twice a year.

Change Management Lead

When introducing Workday into your organization, how you manage change is critical. Incorporating change management from the beginning of the project and clearly articulating the project goals and the plan to achieve them is vital for project success and technology adoption. You’ll want to have a dedicated change leader who can assess your organization’s change readiness, build a communication plan that reaches users and stakeholders early and often, and successfully navigate your team through change.

Your Workday deployment team reflects the ability of leadership to turn their vision into reality. Creating the right blend of team members with industry, technical, and business experience can provide the best foundation for a successful project and high-performance team.

Ready to get started on your Workday project? Leverage our expert Workday consulting team to quickly realize value from your new Workday solution!