Perspective on Workday Professional Services Automation from Acquired Small Business

Workday Professional Services Automation is a great product for large companies that have standardized, repetitive processes. The ability to automate tactical HR tasks is essential for business productivity, and Workday Professional Services Automation delivers well in this area. However, when a non-standardized process occurs, it is difficult to modify the system in a way that doesn't create confusion for the end-user, resulting in a less than desirable HR experience. For example, when my small company was acquired, our parent business utilized the software for transferring employees from the acquired business to the parent business to ensure they could sign up for health benefits, payroll, etc on Day 1; but, because every form is interrelated, the in-house Workday team was either unable or unwilling to change their workday "standard" fields for offer letters. As VP of HR for the acquired team, I had to meet one-off with each acquired employee to reassure them that certain clauses in the standard offer letter would not apply, explain why their personal email addresses were being used instead of their business ones, and assure them that they were being fully vested/transferred employees and were not considered "new employees" like the offer letter stated, etc.