Planning is essential to a successful healthcare ERP implementation, especially when a health system consolidates multiple legacy systems into a modern cloud-based architecture. Organizations evaluating Workday are often impressed by what they see: modern user interfaces, automated workflows, AI and reporting capabilities, and the prospect of eliminating manual processes caused by disparate systems.
The selection process usually gets more attention than planning does. But planning is what shapes how the organization experiences implementation and the stabilization period that follows go-live. Even with thoughtful planning and evaluation, some parts of a Workday implementation are consistently underestimated.
For over a decade, Healthcare IT Leaders has helped health systems plan and execute ERP projects, most recently Workday deployments. The list below draws on three vantage points: our own implementations, our Workday consultants and the customers we support at every stage of deployment. Every deployment differs, so treat each item as a question to answer for your own organization.
Here are seven practical areas to focus on before design begins.
1. Data Transformation and Conversion
Many teams treat data conversion as a mapping exercise. “We will map and move our data into Workday” hides questions that drive cost and resourcing. How many source systems are in scope? How much history converts? Which data has retention requirements? How clean is it, and what happens to anything you do not convert? Organizations that grew through acquisition often carry more source systems than expected. Resolve data quality issues in the source systems before the first conversion cycle. Then treat extraction, transformation, loading and validation as four distinct phases, each with its own skills and owner. Our data integration and migration services cover each of those phases.
2. The Day Job Continues
Naming someone as a workstream lead is not the same as making their time available. The person who runs payroll is frequently the payroll workstream lead. When operational work collides with project work, operational work wins. Payroll still has to run, so the design session, the test scenario or the validation pass gets pushed. Define how many hours the project needs from each named person. Then decide who covers the rest of their job before the collision happens, not after.
Many organizations use Workday staff augmentation for legacy system backfill and operational continuity to protect those hours, and our guide to building a Workday resource and staffing plan for healthcare shows how to size the need.
3. Operational Peaks Are Predictable
Close cycles, budget builds, compensation cycles, benefits enrollment, inventory counts and audit fieldwork consume the same people the project depends on. They also cluster rather than spread evenly across the year. Put your operational calendar next to the project calendar and look at where design, testing and go-live land. Most of these cycles are known months in advance, which makes them something you can sequence around or staff for.
4. Governance Designed for a Cross-Functional Program
Most health systems already have mature governance. The question is whether the structures in place were built for a cross-functional ERP program with decision rights spanning HR, Finance, Payroll and Supply Chain.
Governance designed for a disagreement between HR and Finance inside a week will slow the whole program, no matter who is implementing it. Project duration is largely a function of decision speed. Decide where decisions get made, and how fast, before one is waiting. Our governance and operating model design work helps health systems set those decision rights before design begins.
5. Design Decisions in a New Vocabulary
Subject matter experts are asked to make lasting design decisions in a vocabulary they do not yet speak. A familiar term can carry an adjacent rather than identical meaning in the new platform, and the risk is deciding as though the two match. Training credits and coursework help, but they only go so far. Real fluency tends to build during architect sessions, configuration confirmation and test cycles. Budget time for that learning instead of assuming it accumulates along the way.
6. Test Scenarios Inherit What Design Missed
Starter test scenarios are scoped to standard platform functionality. Adapting them to your configuration, your processes and your edge cases is your work, and that handoff often goes unnoticed. Depth matters more than coverage.
A scenario written from a partly understood design decision will confirm the system did what it was told. It will not reveal whether the instruction was right. Treat scenario development as a workstream with named capacity that starts during the architect stage. If your team lacks that capacity, QA and testing support is available from our Delivery and Transformation Services team.
7. Support Skills Differ from Build Skills
Most of the knowledge transfer during a deployment covers how to build Workday, not how to run it. During implementation there is no ticket queue, no feature release to assess and no urgent report request from a vice president, so those gaps show up after go-live. They tend to surface in business process changes, calculated fields, complex reporting and security maintenance, and in deciding which features from each Workday release to adopt.
Decide what your team must be able to do 90 days after go-live and work backward from there. Continuous Managed Services can carry that load while your team builds the skills.
The Common Thread
Look at the seven areas together and they come down to one question: who is doing this work, and do they have the hours and the skills to do it? Data work, design decisions, collection workbooks, scenario development, validation and operational readiness all draw on the same small group of people. Those people already hold the jobs that keep payroll running and the books closing. Open enrollment does not move because a test cycle slipped.
Timing matters too. During planning, each of these is a line in a budget and a name next to a role. In month nine, these questions tend to result in a project schedule change, a rework cycle or a go-live that moves. The question is the same by then, but you have fewer ways to answer it.
Go back through the seven and mark every one where you cannot yet name a person and a rough number of hours. Start with those. The Workday Staffing Guide can help you put numbers against each role.
How we can help
Healthcare IT Leaders supports health systems across the full Workday lifecycle, including resource and staffing plans through Staffing and Talent Services, program and governance design through Strategic Advisory Services, deployment workstream leadership through Delivery and Transformation Services and production support through Continuous Managed Services. Learn more about our Workday consulting services.
Let’s Connect
Sizing a Workday deployment or already in one? If you want a second read on where your risk is, let’s talk.