Q&A: Getting more from Workday with Datacom

• Datacom's Workday practice takes a generalist, people-first approach to consulting, helping customers simplify processes, trust their data, and get genuine value from their investment.

• Common missteps include over-engineering processes, underinvesting in change management, and not giving users early exposure to the system – all of which can undermine long-term adoption.

• For organisations considering Workday or not getting full value from it, Datacom offers complimentary initial conversations to help identify pain points and map a path forward.

Becky Dent is a Principal Consultant in Datacom's Workday practice, helping organisations across New Zealand simplify their people and finance systems. With a background in change management and seven years of Workday consulting behind her, she brings a rare combination of technical depth and people focus to every engagement.

We asked what good Workday consulting looks like, where organisations tend to get stuck, and why a short conversation could be the most valuable first step.

Becky Dent: My day-to-day involves helping across the board with everything we have at play within the Workday practice. Our team does implementations – building Workday for the first time – and post-go-live support, which we call APLS, or Advanced Platform Leadership Service. That's quite different to a standard support model. We're not just fixing issues, we're actively helping customers get the most out of Workday through system assessments, release recommendations, and ongoing refinements.

As Principal Consultant, I support both my team and our customers. I could be helping with something as small as a weird quirk in a business process, all the way through to a foundational design problem where no one knows what to do. I come in, get to the root cause, map out options, and guide them through solving their pain points. The technical work isn't sitting and coding for hours – the hard part is listening to someone talk through their situation and going, okay, the crux of what you're telling me is this, which means I need to go away and build a solution. It's still technical, but much more people-focused, which I love.

BD: Workday is a cloud platform that lets organisations capture all their worker data and look after their people day-to-day. It covers everything from recruitment and manager visibility, through to learning, performance, compensation, and staff movements – the full employee lifecycle. It also has a valuable finance capability. With Workday HCM and Finance on one platform, it's live information transmitting – no integrations needed. Your accountants benefit alongside your HR staff.

Typically, in Workday consulting, you specialise in one niche area. What distinguishes our practice is a generalist approach, complimented by deep expertise across specialist areas. Workday is like the human body – it's all interconnected, and decisions in one area can have real downstream impacts elsewhere. Our consultants understand the system as a whole, so they're always considering whether a solution is right for the bigger picture, not just one subset.

BD: Simplicity. So often, customers come to us with overcomplicated processes built up over decades that they themselves don't understand. They've got data across different systems that doesn't match up, and it takes a huge manual effort to reconcile it all. They want to get rid of those manual processes and have things be online, simplified, and accurate.

We also make sure customers are covered from a regulatory perspective. Our team is across both upcoming and current legislation, and we send advisory notes to existing customers when changes are coming so they know their configuration needs updating. It's not something every consulting partner does, but it matters.

BD: We get people into the system as soon as possible. When customers have been doing things manually for years, trying to get them to decide their future state in the abstract is difficult. So, we show them – here's what we discussed, and this is what it would actually look like. They can respond, change their mind, and say, that's not fit for purpose. They come along the journey with us – and we take a strategic approach throughout.

Very commonly in projects, people see the system once at the beginning and once at the end, then start testing and go, this isn't right – if I'd seen this earlier I could have told you, but we're past the point of no return. We avoid that. Our customers take real ownership of the design because they feel like it's come from them. 

BD: Two stand out. The first is not using this as an opportunity to simplify. Organisations over-engineer everything – hard stops, multiple approval levels  because they don't trust their people or design yet. Then within 12 months of going live, they realise the system is so auditable that a 30-step process could have been 10.

The second is not putting enough focus on change management and training. Workday is living and breathing. If there isn't a continuous cycle of updating guides, training key users, and establishing champions people can approach for help, it's very easy for people to revert to going offline. And then the adoption just doesn't happen.

BD: The team at Southern Cross had been live with Workday for a long time and was struggling with seasonal recruitment – needing to bring a lot of people in quickly. We proposed a solution that kept their standard process, which worked 90 per cent of the time, but gave them flexibility for that 10 per cent where they needed to deviate. That shift was significant, because so often customers build Workday with tight constraints and then can't flex when they need to without going offline.

Another was a public sector customer with compliance learning. Different groups had different requirements, and they couldn't automate it or report on it. We segmented the groups, designed the automation, and built custom dashboards so they could see exactly who was compliant at the click of a button, every second, instead of manually pulling data that was out of date by the time they finished.

BD: They really like the people. There's a huge focus in our team on building relationships and making sure everyone feels like we're working as one team. 

Beyond that, customers appreciate our ability to identify the issue they're having. It often takes asking the right questions until they can see it. When a customer goes, "yes, that is what I've been trying to articulate" and you see their stress levels drop – that's my favourite moment on every project.

I don't just build relationships for a temporary period. I'm still in contact with my very first Workday customer. If I've put something in place for someone, I want them to know that five years later, if it's not working, they can pick up the phone.

BD: If you're considering it, talk to other customers who have it in place. Then reach out to us for a quick call – even 20 minutes can help you figure out whether it's actually the right tool. It's easy to look at it and go, it's bright, it's shiny, that'll be perfect – but your processes might need more understanding first.

If you're already live but not getting full value, we do what we call a milestone assessment – a roadmap showing what to prioritise now, what to tackle at 18 months, and what to plan for further out. It gives real clarity on how to get from where you are to where you want to be.

Either way, reach out. I'm always happy to have a conversation – no commitment, just an honest chat about where you are and whether we can help.

To start a conversation with Datacom's Workday practice team, visit our Workday partner page or get in touch directly.