The situation
A telecommunications group that had implemented Workday and then discovered what many organisations discover: the platform was live, and nobody owned it. The implementation partner had rolled off. The internal capability to run, evolve and defend the platform did not yet exist.
Two modules in particular had been built to a generic template rather than to how the business actually worked. Recruiting and Advanced Compensation were technically functional and practically resisted.
The work
Building the internal function came first: a fifteen-person global HRIS team spanning Compensation, Core Processes, Talent, Recruiting, Learning, Onboarding, Advanced Compensation, Absence Management, People Analytics and Integrations. Alongside it, a service delivery model, so the function had a defined relationship with the business rather than a queue.
Then the harder decision. Recruiting and Advanced Compensation were re-implemented, because the original build did not fit the group's ways of working and no amount of training was going to close that gap. Re-implementing something the organisation has already paid for and announced is politically expensive and occasionally the only honest answer.
The platform then entered its value-creation phase, evolving across the employee journey while the group was simultaneously executing a significant organisational change against a redefined business strategy. A People Analytics and People Research practice was established in the same period.
What changed
An internal capability where there had been none, a service model the business could use, and a thirty per cent improvement in candidate experience following the Recruiting re-implementation.
The fifth measure
A platform without a team is a liability with a licence fee. The work that mattered was not the modules. It was that the group ended with fifteen people who could run, argue with, and improve the system on their own judgement.