Where Do I Begin?

I guess a first step in trying to explain this Journey is give a little background on my role, company road map and goals that were set when my company first selected Workday as a solution to replace our hybrid cloud/on-prem financials, procurement and expenses platforms. (PeopleSoft, Coupa, Concur)

At the time of selecting Workday as our solution I was managing a team of technical engineers who have been working on PeopleSoft Financials for multiple decades. The team is smart, dependable and super knowledgeable in the PeopleSoft platform from a technical and functional perspective. For example, our developers knew as much about a balance sheet, n/Vision, Data fixes system bugs and fixing them with little disconnect from our business users, aka “The Accountants”. It was a dream team.

As a leader who came from many years developing, integrating, upgrading, patching, installing and all the other things that make a good PeopleSoft expert I began to worry a bit. I found myself a little concerned about how I can lead a team in an implementation this size where customizations aren’t possible and new tools and skills will be needed to assist with Data Conversion, Integrations, Security & Reporting.

We went live in May of 2021. We replaced our procurement systems, expense systems and erp systems in both our North American and APAC regions. EMEA Is part of our second wave. We also took on a new reporting paradigm implementing Workday Prism.

Our journey began in March of 2019. We selected Workday Implementation Services as our implementation partner. Did we make our initial go-live target? Of course, we didn’t. Am I still managing this team? No… but, not because I was the fall guy. I will explain that story in a later blog.

I am writing this series of articles about our implementation journey in hopes that I can help answer some questions or concerns if you are beginning your move to Workday Financials. If you are currently a PeopleSoft shop, even better as I will be commenting on some of the key differences, similarities, and jargon between these two products.

In this multi–part Blog I will be covering the following topics.

• Implementation Approach
• WD Terminology Contrasted with PeopleSoft Terminologies
• Integrations, Integrations, Integrations
• Reporting
• Security
• From Failing Forward to Paying it Forward

Kev