If you’re interested in learning more about our team or services, don’t hesitate to contact us. We look forward to connecting with you and discussing how we can make your Workday experience even better.

Workday Rising EMEA unfolded this November with an abundance of insights and ideas. As gold sponsors of the event, the Preos team had the privilege of attending. 

Below, we’ve compiled the team’s top takeaways and highlights to give you a glimpse into the event and how it will shape our services moving forward to ensure we continue to support our clients in maximising the value from their Workday investments.

If you would like to find out more about how you can optimise your Workday then please don’t hesitate to contact us for more information – we’d love to hear from you.

As the Services Development Director at Preos, it is with real excitement that I introduce our latest offering, Workday Enhancement Services (WES).  

Workday Enhancement Services (WES) was born out of a need widely recognised within the Workday ecosystem and communicated to Preos by many of our clients – the need for greater post-go-live support focussed on increasing the value clients derive from Workday. 

Traditional Application Management Services (AMS) have their place, but they come with inherent limitations. From high staff turnover rates to the lack of a consultative approach in ticket-based delivery models, the challenges are numerous – as we have written about in previous articles. We set out to create a solution that truly adds value to your Workday experience. 

With Workday Enhancement Services, it’s not just about a named Workday consultant offering face-to-face support, it’s about growing your internal capability, providing solutions tailored to your unique needs, and enabling your organisation to maximise value from Workday. Our goal is not just to manage issues, but to prevent them.

During our pilot phase, we collaborated with Workday customers – one of these was IFCO Solutions. Their invaluable insights and feedback, along with great input and challenge from the wider team here at Preos, have helped shape WES into a robust solution that enables clients to deliver more value to their businesses, so a huge thank you to all those who have contributed. 

If you want to learn more about how Workday Enhancement Services (WES) can help you ensure your organisation maximises value from Workday, contact us today. 

Following on from the articles written by David, Caroline and Ben, I wanted to add my own perspective on the AMS market and, in particular the Workday AMS market.

Having been in technology consulting for more years than I care to admit, I joined Preos just over a year ago and commenced my learning journey on all things Workday, the one thing that has surprised me is the poor AMS experience.

There are so many great things about Workday, why is it then that AMS is not great?

Let’s consider certifications first.

Any partner or customer of Workday reading this will understand that Workday applies a greater level of control over the ecosystem than other ERP vendors. This is one of the reasons why I think Workday represents a higher quality solution than others.

Becoming a Workday Partner is a considerable undertaking, and upon attaining this esteemed status, the subsequent certification of partner staff as Workday consultants proves to be a demanding and costly endeavour.

Customers can also have a form of certification, known as Pro, for their employees. Again, gaining those qualifications requires time and money to be invested.

Given the above, how is it that a partner providing AMS services is allowed non-certified resources to support customers? And why are the AMS vendors willing to take that risk? I think it is one of the aspects that drives down AMS quality. It is surprising to me that it widely occurs. Further, why do some customers choose to work with AMS partners who are not even members of the partner ecosystem? That is a complete mystery to me.

So, does a customer have tools at their disposal to mitigate against the risk of non-certified resources supporting their Workday tenant?

The answer is yes, there are.

In recognition of the fact that not all customers get what they want from their Workday solution, Workday provides a service known as Success Plans. These plans help customers identify where and how they might get more value from Workday and, depending on the tier of success plan purchased, get active support from Workday experts. We at Preos are supporters of Success Plans.

Where the potential great benefit of a Success Plan can falter is in the ability of the customer to execute against the recommendations. If the customer’s internal team or their chosen AMS partner does not have the capability to deliver solutions, it is exceedingly hard to extract value from the plan.

Furthermore, the problem with AMS partners and their role in executing Success Plans is that all they can do is respond to what they have been asked to do in a transactional way. Without specific tenant understanding and that of the broader Workday and business context, they are likely to engage in the ticket ping pong to which Ben referred.

Workday partners are not homogenous.

The main caution I would give to any customer reading this is that not all Workday Services Partners are equal.

Workday created the concept of AMS partners as a subset of their Service Partner group just over a year ago. This was done mainly to distinguish post-production partners from services partners. The primary difference being that a post-production services partner, (or AMS partner) as Workday categorises them, cannot deliver the initial implementation for a new Workday customer, and can be restricted on the number of solutions they can add to an existing customer tenant.

As I am sure you can tell from the above, that means these post-production partners could do an awful lot more than just the ‘race to the bottom’ AMS. But many decide to provide AMS services as the high volume and low margin annuity income mitigates against the constantly fluctuating income profile typically associated with project work.

Preos are the experts in Workday Optimisation. We pride ourselves on our Consultants being certified in multiple Workday disciplines. We don’t ever refer to ourselves as an AMS partner as we don’t do ticket ping pong. And, we won’t ever provide an AMS service. What we will soon do is launch a service that enables customers to turn off AMS and turn on optimisation. 

Learn more about the Preos alternative – Workday Enhancement Services.

What clients tell us about AMS…

Following on from David and Caroline’s articles on Application Management Services (AMS), I thought I would share some of the client feedback I receive. Whether your service is labelled AMS, Managed Service, Outsourced Support or some other name, the fundamental findings remain true.

David Cruise and Caroline Eder have already indicated the ticket-based process is frustrating. It is what we in Preos refer to as ticket ping pong. Every movement of the ticket back and forth between the customer and the AMS provider results in a charge, 80% of which is non-value add.

AMS often acts as a training ground for the willing, enthusiastic and ambitious people who start their careers in Workday before advancing into consulting roles on implementations. For the economics of AMS to work, low pay is required to keep costs down, but this limits the quality and experience of the consulting. Customers tell me they want insights into how other customers resolve business challenges in Workday BAU, but this requires years of experience, often in the same industry. This is very hard to find within a typical AMS practice.

High levels of labour turnover or internal churn in vendors organisations result in disconnected support. The less experienced want to progress in their careers so long tenure will not typically be normal.

AMS teams cover multiple customers. These customers have Service Level Agreement targets that need to be hit and the pressure to deliver the numbers probably overrides other factors more important to the customer.

The ticket-based delivery model used in the large offshore AMS service centres often leads to a lack of continuity of consultants throughout the ticket lifecycle. The individuals must rely on the notes recorded in the ticket management system and have no personal context or previous involvement with the customer’s support request, making it harder to design and deliver the right solution. Instead, more time (and money) is spent playing catch up with the previous AMS agent and/or customer who gets frustrated at having to repeat the ask.

We have come across instances of clients using organisations that are not Workday certified. The risk to quality is high as the vendor is typically trying to skirt around Workday quality assurance processes.

AMS is a loss leader for many of the big consultancies. Witness Kyndryl, the spin-off from IBM, which is having to fundamentally restructure itself following years of IBM selling their services at very low or no margin. Kyndryl is changing successfully and has made a big commitment to using Workday as one of its core platforms. AMS typically sits as a division within a much larger organisation and is intended to be low-margin, high-volume.

Building on that point, even where the low cost to the customer might seem a bargain, we see many instances where AMS is not cost-efficient. The customer usually having to re-work or double hand but, as that cost is not so easily visible, it does not get the attention it deserves.

In summary, all these factors result in our clients feeling frustrated and annoyed, wondering what value they get from AMS, disillusioned as they cannot exploit Workday to its full potential and concerned about swapping vendors as they will get more of the same.

Having written all the above, I should stress that some AMS vendors provide services with which their customers are satisfied; sophisticated Workday customers know how to get the best from their provider. But it is infrequent and down to the dedication of outstanding staff in both the customer and AMS organisation.

When AMS services started many years ago, they were genuinely adding value. The static nature of on-premise solutions meant AMS providers could keep enhancing solutions. But AMS is now a commodity service designed around an outdated operating model; it is not right for the flexibility and agility required by customers using cloud solutions. Workday customers need a service that adds value, that can adjust to the flexibility their brilliant platform provides and enables their teams and solutions to grow in capability.

Workday Enhancement Services by Preos

What If AMS Actually Was Value Add?

Last week David Cruise wrote about how AMS (Application Management Services) provides Low Value, Low Return. David mentioned that I have been leading the charge on how we think Workday customers should be supported to ensure they get High Value, High Return. We will have more news to share at Workday Rising EMEA but for now, I wanted to pose a few questions for you all to think about. 

What if you could have a service that focused on case elimination and not on managing high volumes of cases to a rapid close? We think that adds more value to your organisation.

And if, while focusing on case elimination, what if you could work with experts that deliver skills improvements in your HRIS and Finance Systems support teams so your internal team become more and more self-sufficient over time? That might be a better focus for your business rather than spending time managing your AMS partner so they properly fix an issue, not just do enough to close the ticket.

And what if you could have a working relationship with your partner based on conversation, discussion and collaboration? What if you could always talk to the same experienced and highly skilled consultant? To us, that sounds like a much more positive working relationship than one based on tickets, hours and SLAs.

And what if you had a partner who actively helped you manage the feature releases, maximising their potential instead of taking just the mandated changes? That would make the Workday release significantly more valuable to your business.

And what if, at the same time as going through the release, a load of backlog items were cleared so even more value is added to your workers, managers and business leaders? That would have a massive impact on the perceived value of your function in the business.

And what if, over time, you could switch off your AMS service, because you can manage Workday within your own organisation, only needing to call in experts when you have a gnarly problem to solve? That could save your business a lot of money and set your organisation up to use more of the Workday solutions that you just don’t have the time and money to invest in right now. 

Sounds good, right? We’ve been working with Preos customers to pilot a new way of supporting clients. Be among the first to learn about our upcoming new service. Sign up today to stay in the loop.