Defining your Workday strategy for continuous improvement and success

Your first year on Workday is critical to the future of your business

Your business objectives depend on your ability to make smart decisions, and those smart decisions come from data-driven insights. You’ve invested in the technology to collect, store and report on your data to drive those insights, but if your system isn’t optimized, you won’t get the information you need to make those smart decisions and optimize your overall outcomes. And when your business inevitably changes over time, your ability to adapt your technology, processes and people will depend on a solid foundation. You need a partner who understands how to create a sustainable and solid foundation that drives the data insights you need to meet your business objectives, today and in the future.

Troubleshooting the first year

An analysis conducted on our Workday AMS customers last year found that 46 percent of the AMS requests raised by customers were within 12 months of their go-live date, spanning the various Workday modules.

You are not alone.

Technology has come a long way since the legacy and on-premise days. Most organizations have made an investment to better their technology with a cloud solution like Workday, but, even with the right technology in place, keeping these systems well-maintained and optimized can be a drain on your time and resources, and may at times exceed your team’s technical knowledge.

Here are some of the typical reasons we see Workday customers needing an extra helping hand:

Technical expertise on complex cases
Overworked HR team
HR team attrition
Business need outweighs the HRIS team capacity or capability
Backlog of tasks
Lack of time and expertise to test and run each Workday Release
Low user adoption
Have not yet realized the investment in Workday
Need support with ad hoc project work
Need guidance and recommendations on the future roadmap
Want to reskill HR team to focus on value added tasks

Below are the top troubleshooting categories our Workday AMS customers requested help with last year.

Did you know?

Many Workday customers have already recognized the need for a partner. We provide Workday Application Management Services to over 350 customers to support them on their ongoing optimization journey.

Top 5 questions to ask when choosing a Workday Application Management Services partner

1. Will our Account Manager be Workday certified?

Your Account Manager should have technical expertise of the Workday platform to ensure they truly understand your needs. At Alight, our Account Managers partner with you to plan your strategic roadmap and Workday footprint, so it is essential that they are qualified to give you the best guidance.

2. Will you be getting a dedicated Application Management Services team?

As part of your support model, you should expect your partner to have resources who are dedicated to supporting customers who are live on Workday. These dedicated resources will have expertise in your post deployment needs and will also have insights into how other customers are maintaining and optimizing their tenant.

3. Can our deployment partner provide post deployment support?

Our recommendation would be to have a plan in place for how you will support Workday well before you reach the go-live stage. We would even recommend asking this question when selecting your deployment partner to ensure the partner who will deploy your functionality has the capability to help you optimize it post go-live.

4. How will you partner for long term strategic success?

Having a help desk style model in place will answer your short-term needs, but you should be asking your partner how they can help you optimize your platform long-term in line with your business objectives.

5. Can your partner support both Workday HCM and Financial Management?

Whether you have deployed Workday Financial Management or not, it is likely on your future roadmap. Your partner should have expertise across both areas to effectively support your HRIS team and optimize your platform while ensuring your overall business objectives are met.

Comprehensive and cost-effective solutions

Our value packages give you holistic cloud support to achieve both your short- and long-term goals. With the option to bundle the services that best fit your organization’s needs, you can save your business dollars as you watch your return on investment grow. Click into our different services to learn more.

Alight Support Desk

Core services

Support Desk with Discretionary Hours

Value-added services

Dedicated account manager
Domain expert access/discussions
Access to exclusive Alight content (POV reports, pre-defined configurations, thought leadership content)
Webinars & learn from expert videos
Diagnostics and benchmarks health check

Alight Tenant Optimizer

Core services

Discretionary hours pool

Value-added services

Dedicated account manager
Tenant assessment
Strategic roadmap planning
Domain expert access/discussions
Access to exclusive Alight content (POV reports, pre-defined configurations, thought leadership content)
Webinars & learn from expert videos
Diagnostics and benchmarks

Alight Release Updater

Core services

Feature release impact analysis
Mandatory change configuration
Business process and integration regression testing

Value-added services

Dedicated account manager
Up to 250 hours of optional features implemented of your choice
Templates to promote most impactful end user changes
Release features webinar
Recorded demos of key functionality updates
Access to Alight’s report for weekly release impacts

Alight Total AMS

Core services

End to end support of configuration and integrations
Release management
Integration monitoring
Issue triage and troubleshooting
Minor modifications

Value-added services

Dedicated account manager
Tenant assessment
Strategic roadmap planning
Domain expert access/discussions
Access to exclusive Alight content (POV reports, pre-defined configurations, thought leadership content)
Webinars & learn from expert videos
Diagnostics and benchmarks

Additional solutions to meet your goals

While our AMS as a Service solutions are designed to help your organization be proactive and cost-effective, we understand that each business is unique. That's why we offer our AMS solutions on-demand to give extra assistance where needed and to help you prioritize your goals as you look toward exceeding your return on investment value with your Workday system.

Application support

AMS Support Desk

Urgent production support issues and technical questions with response time agreements
Modifications 16 hours or less

Aligned Resource(s)

Domain specific
Guaranteed weekly hours commitment
Resource(s) that know your business and Workday tenant

Packaged Managed Solution

Integration monitoring
Testing services

Enablement

Module Enablement

New module roll-out (i.e. Learning, Prism, Expenses)

Business Initiative Support

Discrete one-time T&M projects (i.e. M&A, plan redesigns)

Release Management Enablement

Feature release support with optional feature enablement and end user communication support

Optimization

Discretionary Pool

Configuration and integration pool of hours to support ongoing optimization of your Workday tenant
Access to Workday certified experts across all financial and HR domains

Assessments

Operational, tenant and integration assessments leveraging our experience to maximize your Workday investment
Provide best practice guidance and recommendation to optimize business processes, increase user adoption and realize your business case

Change Management

Targeted engagement, communication and training to drive user adoption of newly optimized features/functionality

Transformation

Advisory

HR business process transformation
Delivery Model design

Analytics & Automation

Diagnostics
Automated testing tools