Last week, members of the Project Team attended Workday’s big user conference, Workday Rising, where seasoned users imparted lessons based on their experiences implementing and maintaining Workday at their organizations. Here are three important takeaways:
1. Experienced Workday Users Agree: Early Awareness is Key to Success
One of the most-often heard bits of advice from experienced users was to begin demonstrating Workday functionality as soon as you can—when you’ve configured Workday to meet your institutions’ needs and you have it populated with quality data. Early awareness through demonstrations helps users understand how Workday will affect their professional lives for the better, and it builds excitement for a change that might have been pretty abstract before. It also helps prime future users for training by showing the clicks and keystrokes involved in actually getting processes accomplished. The Project Team couldn’t agree more. They’re getting ready to travel to institutions with demonstrations of what Workday will do for them in the near future. Watch this space for more details.
2. NSHE is Like Other Workday Users—but It’s Also a Little Special
NSHE is not the only Higher Education entity to switch to Workday, but it is the first multi-institution system to do it. That gives NSHE a distinct voice in the Workday world—where users are considered an important resource for future product development. Workday Rising is a good example of Workday’s commitment to open communications—it’s an entire conference mounted expressly to bring users together to help make Workday the best system possible. Through their conferences and other channels, Workday gathers feedback and feature requests, and rolls them in to future updates so everyone can benefit from system improvements. As a Higher Education entity, NSHE is a participant in that process. As the first multi-institution implementation, NSHE is breaking new ground with Workday. NSHE’s singular input will help shape Workday’s future as it continues to collaborate with users.
3. Go-live Isn’t the End, It’s the Beginning
Workday is constantly changing. In every one of its twice-yearly updates, it launches new features and refinements that build on its platform and keep it up to date with the latest best practices. After NSHE institutions switch over to Workday in October 2017, Workday will continue to improve and change. NSHE will work with Workday and with all eight institutions to ensure each update takes place smoothly, so everyone will reap the benefits of new features without the headaches that can come from upgrading complex systems.