Your Workday system went live—but is it actually helping improve operations? See how ROI Healthcare Solutions resolved over 200 post-go-live issues across HCM, finance, grants, and supply chain for a regional health system, and what it means for your ERP investment.

A Regional Health System’s Experience Shows Why Go-Live Is Just the Beginning

For healthcare IT and ERP leaders, the pressure around go-live is immense. Months of planning, configuration, data migration, and training converge on a single date, and then the real work begins.

That was the reality for a tribally operated regional health system serving remote communities across the Pacific Northwest. The organization went live on Workday in early 2024, using the Workday Launch for Healthcare methodology. The Launch model is designed to get customers up and running on the service quickly, using healthcare best business practices. Customers are encouraged to adopt roughly 90% of pre-configured delivered business processes to accelerate deployment and to focus the remaining time on those Business Processes requiring custom configuration

The health system met its go-live date, and for the most part, business processes functioned well. However, something was amiss: business users were still processing transactions manually via spreadsheets and other work-around tools.

The CFO engaged ROI Healthcare Solutions to perform a rapid assessment. The findings revealed a critical need to optimize core business processes. Users identified over 200 issues spanning HR, payroll, benefits, finance, grants, and supply chain—a clear signal that the system was not delivering the required results.

The following is their story.

The Challenge: Speed to Go-Live Left Business Process Optimization Behind

The Workday Launch methodology does exactly what it promises: organizations go-live quickly with Best Practice Business Processes. But “live” and “optimized” are completely different. Workday will tell you that following Launch, you must continue to enhance and optimize your processes. For many organizations, post go-live optimization can take on many forms: education, re-thinking process configuration to “do things differently,” and turning on features that were not available or omitted from the original deployment scope.

For this health system, the gap between Live and Operational Proficiency had real operational consequences:

• HR and recruiting teams were working around the system rather than through it, managing manual processes that Workday should have handled automatically
• Benefits configuration errors were affecting eligibility reporting and creating compliance risk, including misconfigured ACA measurement periods
• Finance was operating with inaccurate fixed asset data — the initial deployment had overvalued assets, creating downstream reporting errors
• The Grants module wasn’t tracking or reporting correctly, a significant issue for an organization with substantial state and federal funding obligations
• Supply chain teams were managing exceptions and vendor payment issues manually

The ticket volume wasn’t a reflection of a failed implementation. The system was live and functional. What this organization needed was a focused optimization partner who understood healthcare ERP deeply enough to close these gaps systematically, not reactively.

What We Did: Structured Optimization Across Every Functional Area

ROI Healthcare Solutions was engaged to drive post-go-live optimization across the full Workday environment. Our approach began with a comprehensive review of the organization’s ticket log, combined with in-depth discovery sessions with business users across every functional area. The goal was to understand not just what was broken, but why — and to distinguish configuration issues from training gaps from data problems.

Over the course of the engagement, we identified and drove the closure of 204 tickets across HCM, Finance, Grants, Supply Chain, and integrations.

Human Capital Management and Payroll

With 80 tickets resolved across recruiting, core HR, benefits, and payroll, HCM represented the largest area of optimization work.

In recruiting, we redesigned offer workflows to handle last-minute changes without triggering full re-approval cycles — a common pain point in healthcare hiring. We implemented hard stops to prevent process errors, automated recruiter alerts for open requisitions, and restructured approval routing to eliminate bottlenecks when approvers were unavailable.

In benefits, we reconfigured ACA measurement periods to ensure accurate 1095 generation at year-end. We resolved a series of benefit event triggering issues — cases where changes in employment status, FTE, or leave weren’t generating the correct benefit events — and corrected passive event rule logic that had been looking back one month instead of the current month.

In payroll, we implemented a deferred compensation true-up process to correct match discrepancies when employees hit the federal maximum before year-end, resolved payroll-to-GL data flow issues, and created new pay codes to support time-and-attendance mapping and callback guarantee reporting.

The result: HR and recruiting teams moved from workaround-heavy operations to process-driven workflows, with better visibility, fewer manual interventions, and improved data integrity.

Finance and Grants

Finance optimization addressed 54 tickets across core financials, banking, and fixed assets, plus 33 dedicated Grants tickets that ultimately required a full module redeployment.

The most significant Finance achievement was correcting overvalued asset data from the initial deployment. We researched the source of the valuation errors, reloaded all assets with corrected values, and aligned Workday’s fixed asset net book values with accurate depreciation schedules going forward.

For the Grants module, we performed a complete reconfiguration and redeployment. For an organization receiving state and federal grants, accurate grant tracking directly affects compliance, reporting to funding agencies, and financial transparency. We mandated grant Worktags across specified cost centers, corrected balance sheet entry requirements, resolved grant Worktag carry-through errors on depreciation for project assets, and established quarterly mini-reviews to maintain grants’ health going forward.

Banking reconciliation also received significant attention: we corrected First Notice Item rules that had been mis posting deposits, fixed ZBA rule templates, and established a clear reconciliation process for virtual credit card payments.

Supply Chain Management

While our engagement with supply chain was more targeted, we resolved invoicing and tax issues, corrected PO treatment to properly hit the balance sheet rather than the income statement, configured ACH payment options for problem vendors, and established match rules for vendor credits.

The Outcome: A Stable System and a Clear Path Forward

At the close of the engagement, the Workday environment was materially more stable, accurate, and operationally efficient across every functional area. The identified 200+ issues had been systematically addressed and closed.

Equally important: the organization’s internal IT team was validated. Our assessment found the IT support structure to be appropriately staffed and dedicated. No changes to the internal support model were recommended — a finding that matters, because it means the optimization work will hold.

Looking ahead, we identified three priorities for continued investment:

Workday education and certification. Business and IT teams would benefit from targeted Workday Pro certification in Payroll and deeper training in Benefits administration. Workday Rising — in person or virtually — is worth prioritizing for both business users and IT staff.

Proactive automation in Finance and Supply Chain. These two areas drive approximately 65% of high-priority tickets. Systematically pursuing automation opportunities here will reduce ongoing support volume and improve end-user experience.

Sustained grants health. The Grants redeployment was highly successful. Quarterly mini-reviews will keep new contracts configured correctly and maintain system integrity going forward.

What This Means for Health System ERP Leaders

This organization’s experience is not unique. Across healthcare, the Workday Launch methodology and similar rapid-deployment approaches have helped organizations go live faster than was possible a decade ago. But fast deployment and full optimization are different milestones, and the gap between them has real operational and financial consequences.

If your organization went live on Workday in the last two to three years and is still managing significant ticket volume, working around the system in key areas, or operating with data you’re not confident in, post-go-live optimization is where the return on your ERP investment actually gets realized.

We’ve done this work. We know what it takes. And we know how to get you there without disrupting the operations you depend on.

Ready to close the gap between go-live and fully optimized? Connect with our team to talk through where your Workday environment stands and what a targeted optimization engagement could look like for your organization.

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