Continuous improvement needs to be addressed from the very beginning and from the top down, even prior to implementation during the strategy phase of the project; emphasized throughout the implementation; and accentuated after go live. An effective way to do this is to build continuous improvement into the overall charter of the implementation, decision-making processes, design guiding principles, and the overall sustainment operating model.  Being intentional also means getting out in front of the funding. Budget requests for sustainment resources dedicated to continuous improvement may need to be submitted more than a year ahead of time.

Government organizations transition to the cloud for a number of reasons. For instance, they often turn to Workday for agility, integration, scalability, and functionality that can keep up with their business needs. With the pressures of the implementation, teams often lose sight of these objectives, the full value of which can only be realized after go live. By remembering why the organization chose the cloud to begin with, sustainment teams are more likely to think beyond keeping the lights on to consider how to make them shine brighter.

There is often tension between the philosophy of optimization versus the reality. Sometimes organizations go through process improvement reviews and discover there is more to it than they expected. It is important to be realistic about the capability of the organization, identifying what is truly needed to be able to continuously innovate and figuring out how to fill in the gaps. For instance, organizations may need to get support from their leadership to create a new optimization organization; or they may need to revisit their sustainment models and secure outside help in order to keep moving forward.

If continuous improvement isn’t a part of the current culture, you may need to take steps to get everyone on board. This often begins with socializing the idea up through the leadership ranks so it can be driven back down into objectives for how the new system will operate and evolve. It is also critical to educate business stakeholders on how optimization and innovation can benefit them and what it can mean to end users and constituents.

Both Workday and Deloitte can help educate your team on the value of continuous improvement. This includes providing insights into how other customers, both private and public sector, are successfully evolving and optimizing their Workday solutions. A variety of workshops, webinars, and one-on-one sessions are available. Make certain that your organization is actively engaged on Workday Community, reviewing what other like-minded organizations are doing to evolve and how they are solving for similar challenges. Establish those connections with others on the same journey to create a “community of practice” for sharing.

Optimization and continuous innovation are a community endeavor. Workday’s twice-yearly releases are a form of improvement on their own, but true optimization can’t happen without brainstorming, working with stakeholders, and figuring out where the pain points are. Similarly, post-implementation reviews aren’t as effective as they could be unless a feedback loop with stakeholders is established. The idea is to create mechanisms for constantly obtaining feedback on the system from business leaders and end users who are generally more in-tune with potentially beneficial refinements versus the sustainment team, which may be more focused on tickets and technical issues.