Advisory Support is the Secret Ingredient in your Workday Student Cake
Implementing Workday Student is like baking a cake for thousands of people to eat—and judge on taste, texture, and appearance. The system itself is the oven. Your implementation partners bring the pans and a general recipe. But it’s up to your college or university to gather the ingredients, make the batter, determine baking temperatures and times, and decide how to decorate it. Just like you have to determine the right support to ensure a smooth go-live and seamless operations.
Now, not everyone likes the same kind of cake. Some people don’t like cake at all. And even the cake lovers will have strong opinions about what you serve. You can’t change that—but in this analogy, you have to make a cake, and everyone has to eat it, whether they want to or not.
If you try to cater to the anti-cake crowd, the extremely picky eaters, and those with cake allergies, you’ll never get the cake done. So what do you do? You assemble the best team possible, equip them with the right tools, hire experts—including both implementation partners and advisory support—and get to work.
Designing the Cake
Workday Student is no E-Z Bake Oven. It’s a massive, powerful, high-end oven with a million settings. It can bake any kind of cake you want—but only if the operators know what they’re doing. That includes both your internal team and your external partners.
Implementation partners—the firms contracted to help install and configure your oven—bring pans, recipes, and best practices. Their standard recipe might look something like this: combine flour, eggs, fat, sugar, salt, liquid, and leavening, then bake.
But here’s the catch: you have to decide what kind of cake to serve and whether the results meet your standards. That means figuring out your own ingredient mix, baking temperature, and timing.
Assembling the Cake
The implementation process includes multiple “practice bakes,” called worksets. During each workset, your team bakes and decorates a full version of the cake to test how the recipe works.
Your kitchen staff splits into specialized teams—called workstreams—each focused on individual ingredients, methods, timing, and presentation. Then they bring it all together, mix the batter, load the oven, and see what comes out.
This is where your implementation partners shine: they’re the ones who stack the baked layers and apply the decorations during each round. That stacking and frosting process is highly technical. If the rods aren’t inserted correctly, the cake could collapse. If the sponge is too warm, the frosting will slide off. If they rush, the results will be sloppy.
Tasting the Cake
After each bake, you run a series of tastings—called validation and testing. Feedback from every round helps refine both your process and your partners’ methods. Each round grows more complex as you get closer to “go-live”—the magical day when your campus begins using Workday Student for real transactions.
Before go-live, you’ll bake and decorate the cake one last time. But don’t be surprised when people start taking bites from the bottom layer early—security and access configuration often happen before all the layers of data and decoration are finalized.
There’s no final taste test before the whole campus digs in. You’ll be fielding questions and fixing issues before the frosting sets. That’s normal. Focus on flavor and texture. Make sure everyone coming to the table has a plate, fork, and napkin—and that no one knocks the cake off the stand.
The Secret Ingredient to a Successful Implementation
Every great cake has a secret ingredient—the one thing that takes it from good to unforgettable. In a Workday Student implementation, that ingredient is expert advisory support. It’s what helps you refine your recipe, stabilize the structure, and guide your team through the most complex parts of the process.
Baking nonstop for months—or years—takes a toll. Even the most dedicated team members will be tired by go-live. That’s why it’s critical to invest in support that extends beyond the build. Kognitiv’s advisory consultants remain available on-demand after go-live—ensuring your team has the guidance and resources they need, exactly when they need them.
If you’re planning a Workday Student implementation—or already deep in it—we’d love to help.
Let’s talk about how Kognitiv can be your secret ingredient.
