Common Reasons SaaS Applications Aren’t Being Optimized

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a method of software delivery and licensing in which software is accessed online via a subscription, rather than purchased and installed on individual computers. These web-based solutions make it convenient to perform business on any computer, tablet or smart phone. Applications can be as simple as Microsoft Excel (via Office 365) or they can be more complex to allow business lines to manage their data and business processes, securely. The software and servers are maintained by the vendor, which makes these applications attractive to business lines such as Human Resources, Finance and the IT folks that normally support these groups. However, if the software isn’t configured correctly during the initial implementation or maintained to keep up with frequent version updates then you aren’t optimizing your SaaS and getting the best return on your investment. Following are common reasons why we see firms not optimizing their SaaS applications:

1. Over-purchased Functionality – Often, as part of the original software license negotiation process the client purchases more functionality than can reasonably be implemented in the time-frame budgeted. Sometimes functionality is rushed and rolled out just for the sake of putting it into play, whether it was designed correct or not. In other cases, functionality is shelved for later so that the core implementation can be rolled out to meet the project deadline and budget. Implementation projects are typically scheduled to complete in time for an old system to be replaced and/or just prior to the business having to enter their busy season. As a result, any functionality not completed usually gets placed on the back-burner and in some cases it never gets implemented.
2. No Maintenance Program – The SaaS vendors change the software with each version upgrade, release schedules varying by vendor but some releases happen quarterly. As the software change, chances are so does your business. Each version release should be viewed as a mini-implementation project. Some changes are forced on all users whereas some are optional and they need to be configured in order to take advantage of them. If the business isn’t actively monitoring the functionality that is being released, reviewing it against their business needs and activating the optional enhancements, then the software isn’t being maximized.

Helpful Things to Know About SaaS Applications

• Usually software license fees begin when the contract is signed, not when the software is implemented in production. There is a negative return on investment until the system is implemented and being used. A delayed or extended implementation continues to eat into the return on investment.
• These applications are typically highly configurable, they are not custom. The application is designed to work for the masses so in some cases functionality doesn’t work as desired. Fully understand your business needs and match them to the system functionality to ensure it will work for you before you purchase it.
• The software is maintained by the vendor, however new functionality and changes to existing functionality are released on a scheduled basis. Some functionality is forced on all users whereas some functionality is made available through additional configuration. Make sure you have the resources who know your business and the technology being used.

Recommendations to Optimize Your SaaS

• If you are negotiating a contract with a SaaS vendor, consult with an experienced implementer to confirm the reasonableness of implementing the modules being purchased. A high-level discussion of your requirements can help determine if a module will work for your firm. Also, be careful of biting off more than you can chew. Don’t purchase modules that you can’t implement in the near term as you don’t want to pay recurring license fees on software that won’t be used. An experienced implementer can guide you on the core functionality that needs to be implemented at first and what functionality can be implemented later. In most cases it’s best to work with the core functionality first to help you understand it better, before venturing into new features.
• If you haven’t been maintaining the software version releases, develop a plan and assign the proper resources who know the business and the software. If you don’t have an internal resource who can be assigned to this, there are several vendors who offer this service. However, the best practice is to assign someone internal to your organization who knows your business.
• If you haven’t reviewed the system functionality in 12 months, consider hiring a vendor to perform a gap analysis and/or operational assessment to review your current business needs compared to the current system functionality and best practices.

To learn more about FinServ Consulting’s services, please contact us at info@www.finservconsulting.com or (646) 603-3799.

When a customer implements Workday Human Capital Management it’s often an exciting event for the Human Resources team but can be an underwhelming experience for the firm.  For Workday Human Capital Management customers we’ve seen them struggle to increase user engagement. Implementing Workday is a significant investment so it can be frustrating if there isn’t a sense that it’s used firmwide. Customers that have Workday Financials or Payroll in addition to Workday HCM tend to have higher user engagement. It’s much more frequent that an employee will log into Workday to submit an expense than to update their home address. For those HCM customers that are looking for ways to increase user engagmement, FinServ has a few tricks that have worked for our clients:

1. Explain the impact. Oftentimes the best way to get employees to complete the task you’re asking of them is to explain why you need them to do it. For instance, if you explain to an employee that they need to complete all their tax forms before they can be paid, you’ll likely have a much higher rate of success among your employees.

2. Create a winner. A sure way to increase user engagement is to create an incentive for employees. For example, you can hold a raffle for those employees that enter information you’ve requested. Our clients have had success when asking employees to update their education or career history and entering employees into a raffle for completing their profile.

3. Make the ask easy. Of course if you want your employees to use the system (and like it too) you’ll want to make sure their experience is painless. We suggest leveraging Workday functionality at every opportunity. For instance, if you want employees to update part of their profile, leverage the business process Distribute Document or Task. This will send the task, like updating your Education history, directly to the worker’s inbox so they can easily execute the task without having to navigate to their worker profile.

4. Lastly, include ample instructions. There are many opportunities to include instructions and we encourage our clients to be very explicit. For instance, if you distribute a task, include a customized instructions on how to execute the task. For very detailed instructions, we include a link in our email notifications that brings an employee to a PDF with screenshots on how to complete the task. When creating the task in Workday you are also able to include instructions that will then appear in the worker’s inbox.

FinServ has helped many clients increase their user engagement and demonstrate the ROI for their Workday HCM platform. We also work with clients to plan their annual Workday initiatives, build new functionality, and maintain their system security. To learn more about FinServ Consulting’s services, please contact us at info@www.finservconsulting.com or (646) 603-3799.

Getting Started

After a long selection process, your company decided to go with Workday Financials. You have been sold on the “power of one” and are really looking forward to re-designing your financial processes and finally having a good answer for your auditors. The pre-sales teams have come in and have demonstrated solutions to your current problems. But now the realization sets in….This is going to be a lot of work!
Hopefully, your company has also spent time selecting the right integration partner and have augmented their staff with dedicated internal and external project individuals. A critical first step, is an internal one, spend time thinking about how you want the process to look or what reports you want to produce. This will allow your firm to answer important questions from Workday or the integration partner more effectively.

Workday Methodology

Workday has a formalized methodology and whether your integration partner is Workday themselves or a certified partner, you will find the process to be regimented. The first step in the process is called the Foundation Alignment Sessions (“FAS”). You will be given workbooks to populate which detail your current process. Workday, or the integration partner will ask questions to guide you on how you want this information to be stored in Workday. It is important to note, that a process review is not part of this process. Changes to future processes will be based on decisions made outside of alignment sessions. During the sessions, you may be asked questions to which you don’t know the answer. You may also answer questions having not fully understood the ramifications of the decision. That said, there is still time at this point to re-visit these decisions.

The FAS will cover everything from financial accounting, budgets, expenses, customers, suppliers, banking and any other process or “SKU” that was purchased from Workday. Every session will focus on a business process which is the approval flow associated with the transaction, as well as the key worktags that will need to be populated.
Upon completion of the FAS, the integration partner will conduct a walkthrough of the Workday environment in what is called customer confirmation sessions. This is a chance to fine tune the configuration and make additional decisions.

Testing

After these sessions, the configuration team will update the system and deliver a unit test tenant, at which time, you will be responsible for producing unit test scripts. Upon successful completion of the unit tests (and subsequent updates to the configuration), there will be user acceptance testing (which essentially strings together unit tests) and data conversion. These efforts can be time consuming and should not be underestimated.
A separate wortkstream is needed for managing interfaces (called integrations) and could be with banks or other third-party applications. Additionally, IT is typically involved in SSO and potentially user roles and security. Communication, training and hand holding can be expected.

Go-Live

Your original assessment that this will be a lot of work turned out to be true. However, what you can expect is a powerful platform capable of detailed and flexible analytics to support both your financial and management reporting requirements. Many processes that took you hours or days will be reduced to seconds or minutes. The user community will be capable of self service, which will free up your time to do more value-added activities. Most importantly, the information will be consistent, accurate and necessitate less time with auditors and regulators.FinServ Consulting has been providing technology and business solutions to financial services firms for over 15 years.

For more information on how we can help or guide your strategic direction, please contact us at info@finservconsulting.com or 646-603-3799.

It’s a new year and Workday’s Semiannual Release is fast upon us. As always we recommend thoroughly reviewing the Announcing and Feature Consideration documentation and review the notes in the Release Center prior to the release date, March 9^th, 2019. With new features available in Preview Tenants starting on February 2nd, your team can get a jump start on reviewing and testing the new release features to ensure there are no major impacts to your tenant. Here are a few tips that have served us well with past clients:

1. Prioritize the features. The first action we recommend customers take is to review all the release features and prioritize which items are High or Low impact. It’s important to identify which updates may directly impact your tenant or indirectly impact other systems. Use the tools Workday provides, they offer a spreadsheet that categories each new release feature. It’s a quick and easy way to understand all the release features. In this semiannual release the Workday Inbox worklet is being retired and there  are new updates for Payroll integrations. We’d label the Workday Inbox worklet as Low Impact since the Inbox now is featured directly on the Home screen. For those clients with a third party payroll system, the Payroll integration updates could be a High Impact so it’s important to review the release notes and thoroughly test.

2. Adjust your project plan. In a previous post we wrote about the importance of creating an annual Workday project plan. Once you’ve identified how the release will impact your tenant, make sure to adjust your project plan so that it accounts for the time you’ll spend testing the new features. Ideally, you factored the Release into your Workday project plan but make sure you adjust appropriately if other initiatives need to take a backseat while you prepare for the semiannual release.

3. Enlist help. Enlist the help of your team and other users to make sure that you’ve adequately tested the functionality. It’s okay to have one person lead the Semiannual release preparation but we recommend spreading the testing among your Workday team and other employees at the firm. You’ll want to make sure you test every scenario and examine all the details, which is doable with the help of others.

4. Communicate to your Super Users. If you’ve identified items that will impact your tenant or new features your team could leverage we recommend getting the word out as soon as possible. In past releases we’ve seen updates to functionality that seem minor, like modifying the way a phone number is entered into Workday, create a lot of noise for your other infrastructure teams.

FinServ has experience advising clients on Workday’s semiannual release, including assessing which features will impact the client’s tenant, recommending new features to adopt, and testing existing functionality and integrations. We also work with clients to plan their annual Workday initiatives, build new functionality, and maintain their system security.  To learn more about FinServ Consulting’s services, please contact us at info@www.finservconsulting.com or (646) 603-3799.

As we head into the new year, FinServ has been working with clients to develop Post Go-Live Workday project plans. To best prepare for 2019 your Workday team will need to develop a plan that includes additional functionality rollouts, annual system maintenance, and preparation for Workday’s system releases. FinServ has worked with clients to develop their post Workday Go-Live project plans, below are a few steps we recommend:

1. Start with your laundry list. It’s best to first hold a brainstorming session with your team to write down every Workday initiative including new functionality, system enhancements, maintenance, and data improvements that your team wants to accomplish both in the short term and the long term. We recommend assigning each task with an estimated duration for how many collective hours it will take your team to complete each task.

2. Identify which of these items require a business decision or further discovery. Oftentimes clients will put action items onto their plan that are unrealistic or end up not making sense for the business. For instance, if you want to leverage manager self-service, take the time to speak with your managers to make sure that they are interested in this functionality and have the bandwidth to train and test. Oftentimes an initiative like manager self-service  is put on the plan and it either gets pushed to be completed later on in the year or doesn’t happen at all because your team quickly discovers that the functionality won’t meet the manager’s requirements or the managers simply don’t have the time to dedicate to the initiative. Be selective as to which action items do make it onto the plan so that you set your team up for success. 

3. Don’t underestimate system maintenance. Anyone familiar with Workday knows that Workday requires a fair amount of daily maintenance. If you’re a growing firm your team will likely spend a big chunk of their time creating new bespoke roles, security groups, or segmented security for new members of your team. For example, you may have a new HR member join your team and you’d like to give them Workday that excludes visibility to your HR team’s Compensation data. This type of request would require a new role and a lot of testing before you’d be able to assign the role to the new user. There are also the semiannual releases that your team will need to plan around. Each semiannual release comes with many new features that need to be tested to make sure they don’t impact your Workday environment or have any impact on other integrated systems.

4. Get the business’s input. It’s important that this plan doesn’t just work for your Workday team but it works for your HR / Finance teams and the other department heads. Once you have a draft of your project plan sit down with other parts of the business to get their input. It is important that you have their support and oftentimes you may discover other use cases they may have for how their team can better leverage the system. 

5. Review annually. As you near year-end it’s important that your team reviews the plan and determines how successful they were at executing against the plan. It’s also important to track how accurate the plan was compared to what was accomplish throughout the year, you may be surprised by how many unexpected tasks came up throughout the year (one of our clients created more than 20 new security roles).  Once you’ve reviewed the plan it’s time to start the process all over again for the new year! 

To learn more about FinServ Consulting’s services, please contact us at info@www.finservconsulting.com or (646) 603-3799.

According to a 2018-2019 Sierra Cedar HR Systems Survey, 25% of respondents reported that Workday “always” meets their needs and 70% of respondents reported that Workday meets their needs “most of the time”. Those are lofty satisfaction numbers for sure and in the chart below, this reflects Workday’s inclusion in the upper echelon of Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS).

But what about when Workday does not quite meet your needs? Since Workday is a SaaS (Software as a Service) system, you are dependent on the functionality that is provided, and you could not customize the system even if you were so inclined to do so. Consider the following examples that we have seen with our clients where the existing functionality did not align with the business needs.

• While creating Feedback templates for the Performance Management process, we discovered that you could not add Quantitative Scoring on the templates. The templates only allowed open text boxes that are typically used to support Qualitative feedback
• Enabling the Team Time Off Calendar for Managers to view their team’s Time Off schedules generated unexpected results. In the Calendar, all Contingent Workers were shown as well even though they were not eligible for Time Off. Including the extraneous data cluttered the Calendar, particularly for the Managers with large teams and Contingent Workers. The existing configuration options do not provide any ability to remove Contingent Workers from the view
• Delegating Managers’ Time Off Request capability to their Executive Assistants proved difficult as we could not perform a mass data upload. The mass data upload would have been performed via Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB) and unfortunately, an EIB to do this was not available, making the initial data load (and future data loads) more difficult than expected

Running into scenarios where functional changes are desired is not unexpected and Workday provides mechanisms to actively and passively solicit client feedback and requests. As such, let Workday know about any frustrations or enhancement requests and your voice will be heard. Workday offers several channels to submit and solicit requests that you should take advantage of.

Workday Community

• Post or vote on Brainstorms (product enhancement ideas). Be detailed in your Brainstorm and provide the business case you are trying to solve. The more votes your (or any other) Brainstorm gets, the more traction it gets, and Workday will be more likely to meet the request
• Subscribe to topics of interest so that you will be notified of any new posts relevant to the topic. You will be notified of the latest posts from fellow Workday customers and posts from Workday. Who knows – another customer may provide a work around for your issue or you may see a Workday request for specialty group participation such as:
  • Design Partner Group – actively influence the enhancement design and product road map
  • Early Adopter – become an early user/tester before the enhancement is officially released
  • Product Surveys – provide feedback on pain points on specific features such as Identifying Incorrect Accounting Transactions

Customer Success Manager (CSM)

• Your CSM is there for you, use them. Let them know your pain points, the business case behind the idea and have them be your advocate
• Express interest to your CSM about partnering with Workday for the enhancement. With enough traction for the enhancement and your known interest, you can be selected to be a part of the design process/Design Partner Group
• Participation in the Design Partner Group is limited, so be sure to give your CSM plenty of reasons why you should be a part of the group
• Express interest in becoming a Fast Follower where you will be one of the first to implement the enhancement after it is officially released

The Bottom Line

While Workday will meet most of your business requirements out of the box, there are pieces that are not quite there and often times you are not quite sure how to get Workday to listen to your request. FinServ has been through these situations before with our clients and we know how to work through the Workday support channels. We can help you craft a thorough enhancement request and actively manage/monitor the request. And while the request is being considered, we can help design and implement any work around that will support your business needs in the interim.

To learn more about FinServ Consulting’s services, please contact us at info@www.finservconsulting.com or (646) 603-3799.

With Workday Financials gaining popularity thanks to its customization capabilities, we expect that organizations who have adopted Workday will have their hands full addressing the growing regulatory requirements, particularly around documentation of system controls.

All your departments are affected

Surely, we expect that Corporate Finance, Accounting, and Internal Audit departments will be pressured from management and regulatory bodies to maintain tight controls and processes in response to the adoption of highly configurable solutions like Workday. This is because Workday customers have full ownership and ability to make changes that have material upstream impacts on financial statement reporting to investors.

However, it’s important to note that this will also affect all your departments that interact with Finance and Accounting functions, including your Shared Services, Information Technology, Legal, Valuation, and third-party administrators, and others.

A digital footprint in Workday

Workday has done extremely well by developing an audit trail of changes to every record, configuration, and policy into its platform. The historical log of changes certainly is one of the system’s core strengths. In fact, you can’t even delete instances within the platform. Simply because wiping your history is just not a concept that exists in the world of Workday. Instead, you would need to correct, inactivate, or adjust the component that you’re looking to change.

Let’s take this example: The bank settlement details for one of your suppliers is incorrect. Rather than deleting this, Workday provides the option to “inactivate” or overwrite the details with the correct data for the existing line item. When that item is changed, Workday retains a record of this change activity: the old value, new value, who changed it, and when. 

But what’s missing?

It would be nice if Workday delivered a report that captures the changes to security roles which have the ability to impact financial data. This is an important consideration if you’re familiar with the power of Workday’s security model. A role assignment within the system is not as one-dimensional as providing Sally Hansen the ability to record revenue entries. Such requests should be taken with careful evaluation of the various processes, domains, or functions allowed within that role due to the upstream impacts.

As an example, you may want your payroll processor to post monthly payroll accruals. A seemingly basic function, which is allowed through Workday’s delivered Accountant role to create journal entries. However, you may hesitate before assigning this role as it also allows users to also create cash payments. You can see where things can get complex because someone who has access to both cash and payroll would represent a clear violation of segregation of duties. This would obviously be subject to criticism during an audit as a weakness in the firm’s internal control structure, and required to be remediated to obtain a clean opinion on the financial statements. Therefore, you may want to segment access by creating a new security group with specific access just to post journal entries before deciding to assign roles with core Finance functions.

It goes without saying that the Security Administrator is a very powerful role, one with the ability to change and administer any role within the system without restraint.

So if you don’t have something similar already, it’s worthwhile to create a custom report showing security changes to those key Finance roles. You can hand the report off to senior management, internal and external auditors, and not only will you be addressing a key risk area, but you also gain visibility to what your teams are doing, and you can really manage your people’s roles in a highly configurable platform like Workday.

Ensuring your existing accounting, security roles, and internal controls are compliant with regulatory standards can be daunting. Additionally, since Workday Financials is still a relatively new player in the market, we’ve seen clients challenged to configure their tenant with the confidence to meet their requirements. Because we’ve implemented Financials at several clients, FinServ provides a clear vision of your fully configured Workday tenant.

HCM Example: Managing the Compensation Structure

With all that said for Financials, Workday HCM also presents its own set of complexities. Workday Compensation is used to craft unique packages across all areas of the organization, with the key benefits of having Payroll, Talent, and more all on the same technology platform. FinServ understands that the compensation structure at financial services firms is complicated, and each firm has a unique model. For example, there can be challenges with how a firm runs waterfall distributions, defers payments, calculates discretionary bonuses, and more. Due to these nuances, there is a higher level of customization required by many of our clients compared to other industries. As such, Workday may be required to handle these compensation models with a highly-customized solution in Workday Studio.

FinServ has also experienced the introduction of a third-party vendor to develop a customizable compensation platform that runs in parallel with Workday. This solution may offer a higher degree of flexibility to handle specific requests, such as complex bonus planning with various components and financial roll-ups. This is especially useful as many firms have multiple exceptions or inconsistent compensation rules that are hard to account for with a traditional software provider. These calculations can be fed back into Workday Compensation so the numbers are tracked to each employee, thus enabling all data to flow through a single platform. In our experience, this is often the best approach for alternative asset management firms, allowing the integration to be more efficient from a time and materials basis.

Choosing the right structure for compensation is a big decision since employees’ pay and talent retention are top priorities. Whether you decide to fully develop your compensation through Workday or utilize a third-party integration in parallel, FinServ has experience with both solutions to develop the best structure for your firm. Additionally, FinServ has more than a decade of integration experience with specific knowledge and relationships with vendors in the industry.

Conclusion

Workday is an expensive system that offers a huge amount of flexibility, and has quickly become the de facto choice of progressive firms looking to implement a HCM and Financial systems solution. There are huge, tangible benefits that a firm can achieve from implementing Workday, but the key to success is selecting the right specialist firm to ensure that the system is configured to meet business goals. With FinServ, you have a trusted advisor with experience in both Workday and the industry to help you make informed decisions about what functionality to leverage, ensuring that you make the most out of your Workday investment. We help those in financial services and alternative asset management to create an infrastructure that fosters growth and supports their staff in the most efficient manner possible.