Workday | HR Tech Guide
Using data connectivity and integrations to create a holistic, HR technology infrastructure
By Jodi Ballard-Beach, Dana Hicks, and Mike Kurtz
The events of the past couple years have led us to question the many underlying assumptions we’ve made about what makes a successful workforce.
As companies across all sectors and industries grapple with these changes, HR leaders are forced to examine the state of their HR technology and determine if the systems they depend on both support and promote the future of their work.
With the availability of so many products to deliver a variety of services to your workforce, it doesn’t take long to feel overwhelmed. It’s a common experience for HR processes and programs to run on some combination of ERP, point solutions, vendor platforms, internal communication tools, and the tools passed down from functional teams of yore: spreadsheets, shared folders, Slack channels, web forms, group inboxes, and databases.
A common question we often hear is: “How can our systems work together, and how can our work be less about synching data and more about pro-actively growing, developing, and managing our workforce?”
To help with this, we recommend first identifying a vision and strategy for HR technology at your organization that can guide your decision-making. A central piece of that strategy will be data — how it’s used, how it’s protected, how it’s governed, and how it delivers the business insights you need.
Data has arguably become one of the most important tools in an organization’s toolkit. Knowing where the data is stored and how that data is sourced improves reliability for business decisions. It can be a challenging task to harmonize data across platforms, but with 21st-Century technology, the pros far outweigh the cons.
Workday has positioned itself as the intelligent core of a successful digital strategy and is built to connect with diverse, enterprise-wide applications. In a previous piece, we discussed the benefits of having a data strategy to ensure you get the most from Workday. In this article, we’re examining what data connectivity and integrations are, and — more importantly — why they matter to HR.
The need for data connectivity
Around the time One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was giving America a collective nightmare, the first relational database was created, thanks to the innovative mind of mathematician and database theorist Edgar Codd. These initial databases allowed for large data sets to be stored and processed in a way that wasn’t possible before. As the importance of storing data grew and more organizations turned to reporting and analytics to guide decision-making, the need also grew for greater data connectivity between systems.
Back in the day, system integration was a costly — if not impossible — consideration. The best way to connect data from one system to another was to manually pull information out of each and merge it in a separate tool or customized Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) function. If you’re nodding your head because you’ve had experience with this activity — or work with an entire team in your HR organization who does this in order to compile a monthly dashboard — we have some good news for you: It doesn’t have to be that way.
Moore’s Law posits that, on average, computer capacity doubles every 18 to 24 months. This has been a driver of accelerating change in technology, including HR technology. While this seems stressful, it’s also cause for optimism. As computer processing power has increased, so has the capability to connect and communicate with other systems and tools.
These developments in technology illuminate the need for renewed focus by organizations on building strategies for keeping pace with change. With the advent of cloud technology and modern connectors, connecting platforms to meet business objectives has become easier to implement and enables an optimal design for fulfilling this need.
Why it matters for your organization…
Properly connected platforms could be the difference between minutes and days to perform the tasks that keep your business moving and your employee experience frictionless.
Having a focus on data connectivity means:
- Key HR platforms are connected and share data without manual intervention (goodbye, duplicate data entry!).
- Shared data is specifically called from one system and put into another, according to your organization’s data definitions. This reduces the need to interpret and clean data as it moves from one system to another.
Nurse Ratched may haunt our imaginations, but the nightmare of manually synching data in multiple platforms should be a thing of the past.
The rise of API and SaaS
Amid the Y2K panic, a group of developers chose not to work on updating millions of date fields and instead focused on something called an Application Program Interface (API). The web API was a revolutionary tool that enabled numerous innovations, from making products available for purchase on websites to the cloud (yes, that cloud). Integrations are the means to connect all HR applications and platforms, both internal and external.
These innovations produced a new class of technology: Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). It’s a fun word, and we’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who hasn’t used a SaaS application, whether it be Google Apps, Salesforce, Dropbox, MailChimp, or DocuSign.
As a SaaS-based application that operates in the cloud, Workday is built for data connectivity, ultra-fast processing, and broad collaboration. Workday provides its customers with the information needed to make thoughtful decisions about their HR technology ecosystem by delivering both modern integration tools and a Workday Software Partner catalog with connector details. Through Workday Extend, you can also develop custom applications to store or process data to meet needs unique to your organization.
Why it matters for your organization…
There is no HR organization that uses a single platform for all of its needs. Workforce data is constantly being sent and received between internal and external systems to manage all the services and programs HR administers. Adopting a modern integration strategy will provide a framework that works for HR and the enterprise while improving the overall experience.
Having a modern integration strategy and robust ecosystem governance means:
- Having well designed integrations that do not require manual workarounds and always result in the right data being put in the right data field at the right time.
- Advancing your ability to adopt frictionless business processes, connect systems to enhance data flows, and reduce manual workarounds.
- Enabling your workforce to thrive amid rapid change because the tools they rely on consistently produce reliable data and workflows to support decision-making.
- Having the ability to add a new application to a growing HR technology ecosystem without exponential increases in system and data maintenance.
The turn of the century may have brought fears of technical collapse, but with today’s modern technological innovations, you’re actually taking more of a risk by not using them.
HR technology solutions can be overwhelming, but we’re here to help. As Workday partners, we focus on enabling customers to achieve value from their Workday investments by combining elements of strategy, people, process, and technology. Our approach is tailored to client needs and can include end-to-end strategy, implementation support, tactical health checks on topics such as integrations or adoption, and optimization.
Slalom is a global consulting firm focused on strategy, technology, and business transformation. Learn more and reach out today.
