Managing Workday’s bi-annual releases and ongoing operational tasks presents a significant challenge for higher education institutions. Limited resources and time often mean institutions struggle to keep up with the rigorous demands of testing, updates, and documentation. This frequently diverts attention and resources from strategic initiatives like innovation, productivity, and academic excellence. In this case study, we showcase how our team helped a leading higher education institution by taking ownership of these administrative tasks and streamlining its Workday operations to enhance productivity and reduce operational burdens so that they could focus on their core mission—advancing education and innovation.
Challenges
Our client, a leading higher education institution was facing difficulties managing the bi-annual Workday releases and day-to-day documentation requirements. The client’s internal teams were overwhelmed by the volume of tasks, such as testing new updates, reviewing the "What’s New" reports, and keeping documentation up-to-date. Additionally, the institution lacked the time to train staff on new features, leading to inefficiencies in system use.
Extensive Workday Testing
Bi-annual Workday releases required thorough testing to ensure seamless integration into their existing system, but the institution lacked the bandwidth to carry out these tasks effectively.
Documentation Updates
With constant updates to Workday, creating, reviewing, and updating job aides and process documentation became a significant burden on time and resources.
Focus on Strategic Initiatives
The internal teams were bogged down with administrative tasks, leaving little time for high-priority projects that drive academic and operational growth.
Our Solution
To address these challenges, our company provided specialized staff augmentation services that allowed the client to offload their Workday-related tasks while maintaining control over key strategic initiatives. We equipped our staff with a comprehensive understanding of Workday’s ecosystem and trained them to handle all critical operational and administrative tasks within Workday.
Our expert team took a two-part approach, focusing on bi-annual release management and day-to-day operations.
PART I: Bi-Annual Release Management
Project Initiation & Management
We managed every release cycle from start to finish, ensuring that timelines and goals aligned with the client’s needs. Our dedicated project managers initiated each release process with clear objectives and milestones.
Test Plan Execution
Our team executed rigorous test plans to ensure that each Workday release was smoothly integrated into the client’s system. By identifying potential issues before they impacted operations, we ensured the institution experienced minimal disruption.
Weekly 'What's New' Review
Our team reviewed the “What’s New” report from Workday on a weekly basis, identifying relevant updates for the client. This allowed us to proactively address upcoming changes and ensure the client’s system remained current and compliant.
Weekly Strategy Meetings
To keep the client’s team informed and prepared, we hosted weekly meetings to discuss which features were being automatically implemented in Workday. This collaborative approach ensured no surprises and allowed the institution to prepare for upcoming changes.
PART II: Day-to-Day Operations
In addition to managing releases, we also spearheaded currency of documentation to reduce end-user impact on changes. This also assisted in reducing user calls and empowering citizen computing within the organization. With every Workday update, we re-trained our staff and refined our strategies to ensure that the institution fully benefits from the system’s capabilities.
Documentation Management
Our team organized 30-minute weekly meetings with department heads to gather information and create comprehensive documentation that accurately reflected the institution’s workflows. This documentation helped streamline operations and ensure consistency across departments.
Creation, Review, and Updating of Job Aides
We continuously worked with the client to create, review, and update job aides, ensuring that staff members had the resources they needed to effectively use Workday’s features. Our job aides were easy to follow and kept in line with Workday’s evolving functionality.
Scalable Support
As the institution’s needs grew, our team scaled its support proportionately, providing additional resources and expertise, as and when necessary. This flexibility allowed the client to remain agile in the face of evolving challenges and move effortlessly toward new organizational goals and strategies.
High-Level Project Plan
Results
Through our partnership with this higher education institution, our staff augmentation services delivered measurable improvements in operational efficiency and reduced workload for the internal teams. Here’s a breakdown of the specific results achieved:
Increased Productivity
The institution’s internal teams could focus on strategic initiatives as they were reassured that our team handled Workday’s administrative tasks. This shift resulted in more time for innovation and academic excellence. The institution created Success Plans outlining features to be implemented within their pipeline, thus avoiding stagnation in innovation.
Reduced Operational Burden
Our team’s efficient management of Workday releases and documentation led to significant time savings, allowing the institution to allocate resources more effectively. By offloading the documentation and job aide creation process to our team, the institution saw a significant reduction in administrative overhead. Each department received regularly updated and accurate job aides.
Improved Knowledge Management
With the creation of job aides, test scripts, and functional documentation; we enabled the institute to have a comprehensive documentation plan that would ensure succession planning and operational consistency.
Ensured Preparedness
By executing test plans, the institution was better prepared for the releases and had a peace of mind that changes in the releases are not going to affect current business processes.
