A $3.5B healthcare provider moved their HCM and payroll operations from 15 disparate legacy applications to a single Workday tenant.  Premier facilitated the data migration for this initiative.  Download the PDF to learn how Premier made the data track successful.

Project Scope

  • 15 Legacy Applications
  • 50 Conversion Objects
  • 20K Employees
  • 18 Months

Key Data Objects

Core HCM | Compensation | Payroll | Absences | Benefits | Talent | Recruiting | Learning

Primary Data Sources

Infinium | Sage HRMS | Meditech | JobVite | Healthcare Position | Manager | MyCompass | Healthstream | Relias | Lippincott | Elsevier | ADP | Fidelity | Active Directory | Reliance Matrix

Expectations

  • On-Time and Budget
  • Drive Data Quality
  • Minimize Client Resource Effort
  • No Impact on the Open Enrollment Process

Risk Factors

  • Client Resource Constraints: Client resourcing was limited and often times a single person was responsible for many tasks spread across multiple workstreams. Premier needed to enable our client to spend time focusing on items that only they could answer and clear other data obstacles from their path.
  • Duplication Across Legacy Systems: Each legacy system used a worker-based approach in how they managed worker data, with three positions under the same worker as three separate workers with different employee IDs. Additionally, the legacy infrastructure prevented the business from getting insights of harmonization issues across the various data sources.
  • Inconsistent Legacy Data Files: When the legacy data was managed by third-party vendors or the legacy infrastructure prevented direct access, data extracts were generated as part of the migration. Getting consistent/accurate extracts from these systems was difficult and needed processes in place that helped ensure their accuracy.
  • Last Minute Changes to Scope: Change is expected in large implementations. The client understood the risk of scope change and expected the data team to address any scope change in stride. The most impactful scope change was that benefit providers switched during the final build. This required new data sources to be incorporated and tested without impacting the timeline.
  • Benefits Open Enrollment: During the last two months of the implementation, the organization went through open enrollment with a new benefits provider. Premier needed to enable the client to focus on facilitating open enrollment while incorporating all the necessary changes needed to the data migration without impacting timelines.
  • Complex Cutover Transaction Maintenance: High volumes of transaction data needed to be migrated, monitored, and managed during the cutover window. To ensure the accuracy of migrations and to not disrupt business, validation needed to be efficient and trustworthy.

Premier's Workday Accelerator's

  • Shortened Tenant-Build Timelines: Hundreds of Workday pre-validations dynamically check converted data against tenant configuration before load; speeding up issue identification, issue resolution, and overall load time allowing more time for users to test.
  • Real Data, Real Quick: With Premier, clients achieve data-load success percentages over 90% in the first (Foundation) tenant build, fueling more accurate Workday tenant configuration and test results during the subsequent project stages.
  • Workday Delivery Approach: Step-by-step data conversion execution process from the Plan stage through the Deploy and Hypercare stages, understanding the dependencies and ensuring all execution follows the Workday delivery approach.
  • Tenant Upgrade Support: Data conversion tool assessment with each semi-annual tenant version release to ensure conversion solution always meets the current requirements.
  • Templated Workday Conversion Tools: Developed with years of Workday implementation experience, our tools expedite requirement gathering and conversion development while ensuring you get the best solution.
  • Customized Data-Quality Strategy: Insight into the legacy data landscape, alongside the understanding of Workday best practices, allows Premier to deliver a customized data-quality strategy suited to your specific needs.
  • Automated Cleansing: Automatically cleanse data objects such as Employees, Addresses, Students, or Suppliers, ensuring that your Workday solution goes live with data quality standards fit for the cloud.
  • Your Data, Workday-Ready: Generate load-ready data in standard Workday Advanced Load, Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB), iLoad, and any other custom load workbooks.
  • Data Validation Support: Accelerate the validation process through post-conversion validation planning and reports for functions such as payroll or finance.

Mitigating the Risk - Client Resource Constraints

  • Gated activities within project management strategy to keep the team focused on most critical tasks
  • Leveraged Applaud data profiling capabilities to accelerate data mapping activities
  • Accountable for data extraction, profiling, analysis, cleansing, and transformation data conversion activities enabling client resources to focus on requirements, validation, and getting familiar with Workday
  • Applaud's data cleansing and enrichment features enabled the business to focus on what correct looks like and let the actual data cleansing occur in within Applaud's data repository

Mitigating the Risk - Duplication Across Legacy Data Sources

  • Leveraged Applaud's data matching engine to automate the legacy data linkage and deduplication of employee and contingent workers
  • Automated the process to select the correct primary position by applying a custom set of rules to Applaud's data-matching engine
  • Improved the business's vision of overlapping data across the legacy data sources through Applaud's reporting capabilities
  • Implemented a detailed audit approval process that provided a clear view of all the deduplication and consolidation that occurred during the migration
  • Broke down the silos between multiple entities through the establishment of clear data ownership, stewardship, and governance processes to promote trust and increase the accuracy of all cleansings, enrichments, and transformations
  • Managed a new position-based system through the implementation of complex eligibility checks and provided the analysis to give the business clarity and trust that the plans were assigned appropriately to the correct position

Mitigating the Risk - Inconsistent Legacy Data Files

  • Identified file structure changes with the third party provided data files using Applaud's import reporting process
  • Established file review process with third-party system administrators to confirm unexpected changes that occurred before each tenant build
  • Created detailed workflows that ensured alignment between the business, third-parties, and data conversion team
  • Documented the complex data extraction process to show where, when, who, and how all data is extracting from legacy environments

Mitigating the Risk - Last Minute Changes to Scope 

  • Executed data track risk management process that pinpointed scope risks months ahead of the go-live period to allow adequate time to mitigate most changes
  • Kept last-minute specification changes in line by enforcing Premier's specification freeze portion of our process that requires extra approvals when changes come in after agreed-upon dates
  • Quickly identified the impact of requested specification changes through Applaud's "Where Used" and "Functional Snapshot" features
  • Collaborated with the implementation partner to identify the most efficient way to incorporate critical scope changes that occurred mid-build into the load schedule without impacting timelines
  • Implemented scope changes into the automated migration programs without impacting deadlines through Applaud's transformation components

Mitigating the Risk - Benefits Open Enrollment 

  • Proactively strategized with the benefits team to change the conversion approach to accommodate open enrollment administration and the incorporation of new benefits provider data into the implementation
  • Leveraged Applaud's rapid application development capabilities to implement conversions necessary for the new benefits provider within the project timeline
  • Facilitated additional test cycles to flush out issues ahead of the gold build window

Mitigating the Risk - Complex Cutover Transaction Maintenance 

  • Enabled the team to address missing configurations in the tenant ahead of the cutover window through Applaud's Workday pre-validations
  • Instilled confidence in the transactional data through Applaud's Workday pre-validation reports that alert the team of data issues within the EiBs and DGWs
  • Optimized transaction conversion schedule by identifying and proving out that certain data files be loaded prior to and after cutover
  • Facilitated the migration process through a repeatable, predictable, and highly automated migration process within Applaud
  • Accelerated the validation and reconciliation process by providing validation reports that join the legacy data to the fully migrated data from Workday.
  • Provided 24 hour support during throughout the cutover period in case of any unexpected surprises (there weren't any)

Project Results

  • 100% load success for Core HCM
  • Migrated 19,794 employees and 3,579 contingent workers with 100% load success
  • Identified and closed 1,179 of 1,192 data related defects
  • Harmonized data for 1,173 duplicated employees
  • 97% load success across all data objects for the Configure and Prototype build
  • Data conversion completed on time and within budget
  • Expectations for limiting internal resource time was exceeded