WORKDAY INSIGHTS

Six months after go-live, most Workday teams are in trouble and don't realise it yet. The implementation partner has rolled off. Feature releases are piling up. Enhancement requests are growing faster than anyone can triage. And the operating model that looked sensible during hypercare is quietly buckling.

Every Workday programme I've seen had talented people working hard. Status meetings happening. Slides updated. Risks listed. But when something went wrong, no one could answer one question: who actually owns the outcome? That's not a people problem. That's a design problem.

Your SI is measured on utilisation, margin, and throughput. That doesn't make them bad actors — it makes them a business. But when one vendor controls the plan, the resources, and the change narrative, governance becomes theatre. Here's what real oversight looks like.

I worked with a client who budgeted $3.2 million for their Workday implementation. Eighteen months later, they'd spent $4.7 million. When I asked their CFO what happened, she pulled out a folder containing 23 change orders. Here's what nobody told her: most of them were preventable.

Workday implementations fail due to leadership, not technology. Learn how to hire a Workday project leader who protects your budget, timeline, and outcomes