The Importance of Deployment Strategy and Change Management
Industry research shows up to 70% of ERP system implementations fail to meet their original business goals, resulting in deployments that go over budget, miss deadlines and underdeliver on ROI.
While Workday offers best-in-class capabilities for human capital management (HCM), finance, and payroll, implementation can falter before configuration even begins without a clear strategy and decision-making structure. That’s why strong project leadership, business process alignment, and change management planning are prerequisites for Workday activation and user adoption.
Whether you’re considering deploying Workday HCM, rolling out payroll in a second phase, or launching the full suite, we have proven deployment methodologies as a trusted Workday consulting and services partner.
A Smart Start to Workday Success: Governance
One of the most common (and absolutely avoidable) reasons Workday projects go off track is a gap in project governance. A 2022 survey from McKinsey & Company found that 70% of failed digital transformation efforts lacked clearly defined leadership roles and accountability structures.
Why Governance Matters
Governance refers to the decision-making framework that supports and guides your implementation. It also defines who makes what decisions, how escalations are handled, and how progress is measured. Without this, projects often drift, decisions get delayed, and teams work in silos.
A solid governance model typically includes the following roles:
- Executive sponsor: Owns the business case
- Project manager: Drives timeline and coordination
- Functional leads: HR, Finance, IT, and Payroll – own process decisions
- Steering committee: Provides oversight and resolves escalations
This structure ensures that when issues arise your team has the mechanisms in place to resolve them quickly and thoughtfully.
Three Link Solutions brings a turnkey model to every Workday engagement. From steering committee templates to RACI matrices, we give leadership the structure they need to make informed, timely decisions that set the business up for an efficient go-live and immediate value.
The Timeline Tradeoff: Going Fast Can Derail You
Speed is often a top priority, especially for high-growth organizations. Workday GO equips small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) to go live in as little as 8 to 12 weeks. But speed without the right foundation and clearly defined outcomes can backfire. Too many projects set arbitrary go-live dates driven by budget cycles or executive pressure without fully understanding the time and effort required for a successful rollout.
Signs that a timeline has become more of a liability than a strategy include:
- Incomplete requirements
- Delayed data extraction
- Unprepared teams
- Shortened testing cycles
According to Deloitte, 43% of ERP implementation delays stem from unrealistic time estimates made before kickoff. The best way to mitigate this risk is to:
- Start with a readiness assessment
- Involve all functional stakeholders early
- Build milestone-based project plans instead of hard calendar deadlines
At Three Link Solutions, we provide clients with milestone-driven timelines tied to clear deliverables and outcomes, not just dates. We also help build and manage a Day 2 List: a parking lot for enhancements and requests that can be tackled after go-live, keeping the project lean and focused.
Avoiding Scope Creep with a Day 2 List
Scope creep is the silent killer of many digital projects. It usually begins with small, seemingly harmless requests—an extra dashboard here, another integration there. But over time, these additions stretch timelines, strain resources, and complicate testing.
One of the most simple and effective techniques we recommend is a Day 2 List. Instead of saying yes to every ask from stakeholders, embrace a more agile mindset by asking: “Is it critical for day 1 go live?”
Workday is highly flexible to grow with evolving business needs. Building a prioritized backlog of desired features, reports, integrations, or enhancements that can be deferred until after the initial go-live ensures your team can focus on successfully launching a stable, efficient core system first.
We help our clients structure their Day 2 Lists by business value, effort, and dependency.
Benefits of a Day 2 List:
- Keeps the project lean and focused by deferring non-essential features
- Builds stakeholder involvement and trust because requests are being tracked and prioritized
- Creates a roadmap for future phases and optimizations
Change Management: The Hidden Accelerator
Change management is often the most undervalued element of a Workday deployment, but it plays an outsized role in success. You can configure a best-practice process, but if people don’t understand how to use it, or why the change is happening, you’ll struggle to achieve adoption.
Too often, change management is viewed as an afterthought, triggered in the final weeks before go-live and often limited to an email announcement or a few slides in a team meeting. Lasting change starts at project kickoff and comes from participation and information to enable lasting change.
Communicate Early and Often
Employees need to know what’s coming, why it matters, how their roles might change, and what support they’ll receive. Communication isn’t just about sending updates, it’s about listening, addressing concerns, and reinforcing key messages through multiple channels and formats.
Involve SMEs and Champions
Involving SMEs, super users, and department champions early can help drive peer-to-peer trust and reduce resistance. These individuals are essential in testing, training, and post-go-live support.
Prosci’s 2023 research shows that projects with strong change management are six times more likely to meet or exceed their objectives.
At Three Link, we embed change enablement into every phase of the project lifecycle, from initial stakeholder analysis to post-launch reinforcement.
Laying the Foundation for an Efficient Launch
Workday is not a lift-and-shift system. Transformative power lies in its configuration flexibility which makes effective preparation critical. Successful organizations are the ones that invest upfront in building the right foundation—from aligning leaders and stakeholders around outcomes and structuring clear governance, to planning change enablement and managing scope and timelines.
Nucleus Research found that organizations that partner with experienced third-party advisors are nearly 50% more likely to hit their go-live date on time and stay within budget.
At Three Link, we’ve led hundreds of successful Workday projects with strategic guidance, proven processes that save time, innovative solutions that reduce customer effort, and hands-on support to help our clients get it right the first time.
Want the full roadmap?
Check out the Workday deployment framework white paper: The Smart Path to Workday Deployment: A Practical Guide for Getting It Right the First Time.
🔗 Need help with project leadership, governance structure, or other Workday implementation best practices? Connect with us to schedule a consultation.
