Mark Judd was Vice President of Product Strategy EMEA at Workday for more than four years.
During that time, he was responsible for connecting Workday’s customer requirements with product design. Mark’s championing of the customer-led to a series of innovative developments that helped consolidate Workday’s position as the leader in its field and maintained its excellent record for customer satisfaction. Before joining Workday he was the HR Services Solution Lead at Rolls-Royce.
Mark left Workday in 2021, and since then has been building a career as an independent advisor to a portfolio of clients, including Preos, where he helps us build a greater understanding of Workday customers’ requirements and priorities.
In this interview, Mark shares his views on Workday Optimisation and explains why he has chosen to act as an advisor to Preos.
We are delighted to have his support.
Transcript
Meet Mark Judd
Hello, my name’s Mark Judd. I am a Strategic Advisor to Preos. I started working with Preos in the middle of 2021.
Prior to that I was the Vice President of Product Strategy for Workday, for Europe Middle East and Africa. And before that I have had a history of senior roles in operational HR for companies like Toyota, Price Waterhouse Coopers and Rolls Royce.
You were approached by several organisations, why did you choose to work with Preos?
The reason I wanted to work with Preos is after 4 and a half years of being the Vice President of Product Strategy with Workday, I retired from my full-time role in middle of 2021, and I was looking to do something that I would find truly interesting. Create a portfolio of activities. Some Workday related and some not so much Workday related. But there was an element of that I wanted to focus on, which was around helping customers optimise their product that I had been involved in, in helping to roll out across the European theatre.
I also happened to know the Preos guys for many years, David and Ben, and liked them very much. And so, it was a great opportunity to align the stars and bring things together. Work with people that I liked that I trusted, but also do something which I think fundamentally moved the value proposition for customers on so that they could get the most out of their Workday products.
Do you believe the demand for this kind of support is new?
I don’t think the demand for this kind of support is new. In fact, when I think back to when I was a Workday customer around about 2015, I identified very early on that the more sophisticated the product became and the more that we as a business wanted to adopt it during my time at Rolls Royce, the more we would need support, partnership in helping to optimise the product. What was interesting is at that time there was very little in the market that was around post-implementation aftercare support for really making the most of the Workday product. And I remember having a number of conversations with providers and partners at the time, but the real focus was very much on helping businesses go live and less so around helping businesses optimise.
Should an AMS take care of Workday Optimisation?
In my mind, there is a very big difference between what AMS offers, which is really about release management, testing, ticket management etc. And there is a place for that for most organisations to have that support to supplement the internal operational teams that they have and the whole process of optimising a cloud technology such as Workday. There is a difference. You need that kind of more sophisticated understanding around enhancement when it comes to optimisation. It isn’t AMS. It isn’t a routine. It isn’t a batch process or routine testing activity. It’s getting into the strategic requirements of the business. Understanding what is important to them. Helping to look at the match between those business objectives and then relating that back to the Technology to ensure that what is deployed is done so on an intelligent and well-constructed roadmap.
Do you see this as remedial work for customers who are in trouble or is it more than that?
This is more than just remedial work for customers, but it is true that some customers may have found they have lost pace through successive releases. Their operational teams, that may have been quite substantial at the point of go live could well have reduced in size or they may have seen successive releases come and go without optimising what is there. So, there is a degree of support that can be offered to catch up to make the most of what Workday can offer to date. But it is more than that it is also priming organisations for what is coming in the future. Making sure that they have made use of all the appropriate structures, the way of organising the technology and also considering what is coming down the line in the next few releases, so they are well-positioned to take advantage of that.
What would your advice be to a customer thinking about how to get more out of Workday?
Customers have invested a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of money, a lot of resources in putting Workday in and utilising it within their businesses, rolling it out and ensuring the change management is done. But it doesn’t stop at the point of delivery. It is a continual investment in effort and time. So, I would encourage every customer to have a very well thought through optimisation strategy and roadmap. And I think many customers will need some help to do that.
And one of the things I particularly like about Preos is there are no distractions. It is not about new implementations. It’s all about optimisation. All about helping customers make the most of everything they have put in and sustain that level of growth and sophistication and utilisation and making the way they work the product really drive business success for them.
