Two years after go-live, the complaints sound like this: "Workday doesn't do what we need." "We still run everything in spreadsheets." "Why are we paying for modules nobody uses?"
Here's what a health check usually finds: the system was configured reasonably well -- for the organization you were during implementation. Then the organization changed, processes drifted, admins turned over, and nobody owned the gap between what the system can do and what people do.
The three places value hides
1. Features you own but never turned on. Most enterprise Workday contracts include functionality that was descoped during implementation "for phase two." Phase two rarely comes. A configuration review against your actual license often finds capability you're already paying for.
2. Processes that route around the system. Every spreadsheet that shadows a Workday process is a signal -- usually that a business process was configured for how the project team imagined work, not how it happens. Fixing the process beats blaming the platform.
3. Data nobody trusts. When leaders don't trust the dashboards, they stop using them, which makes the data worse, which deepens the distrust. Breaking that cycle is unglamorous work -- ownership, definitions, audits -- and it's where reporting value comes from.
Before you buy anything else
An optimization assessment costs a fraction of a new module and usually pays for itself by finding what you already own. The right order of operations is: adopt what you have, fix what's drifted, and only then expand.