Campus Spotlight: Portland Community College

Institutional Moment

Strengthening Adoption

Institution Snapshot

Institution: Portland Community College

Institution Type: Public Community College

Location: Portland, Oregon

Technology Initiative: Workday HR/Finance and Workday Student

Engagement Style: User Experience Strategy and Adoption Readiness Support

Engagement Length: Pre-Implementation Readiness and Dashboard Design Engagement

Using Yesterday's Lessons to Prepare for Tomorrow's Success

As Portland Community College prepared for Workday Student, leadership saw an opportunity.

The institution had already gained valuable experience through its Workday HR/Finance implementation. Along the way, administrative users across campus shared honest feedback about the challenge of finding the information and tasks they needed to do their jobs effectively in Workday.

Rather than treating those concerns as isolated frustrations, PCC chose to view them as preparation for the future.

Before moving into the next phase of modernization, the college wanted to address adoption challenges, improve the user experience, and demonstrate that Workday could become easier to use, not simply another system employees had to work around.

You Might Be Here If...

• Users are struggling to find the tasks, reports, or information they need.

• Adoption challenges from a previous implementation are still creating friction.

• Teams rely heavily on workarounds, documentation, or tribal knowledge.

• You want to improve the user experience before launching another modernization initiative.

• Staff have valuable feedback, but no clear process exists for turning it into improvements.

• Leadership wants to build confidence in the system before asking users to embrace another phase of change.

  
  

The Challenge

For PCC, the challenge was never just about creating a dashboard.

The college wanted to better understand how administrative assistants, academic support staff, and other campus users experienced Workday in their day-to-day work.

Users needed clearer pathways to common tasks, reports, and resources. They also needed greater visibility into access requests, security-related information, and other activities that affected their daily responsibilities.

At the same time, PCC was planning for Workday Student.

Leadership recognized that user experience would influence adoption during the next implementation phase. The institution wanted to apply lessons learned from HR/Finance before those same challenges carried forward into the future.

The goal was not simply to improve a tool. It was to improve how people experienced the system.

The Turning Point

The defining realization was that adoption challenges are often design challenges.

When users struggle to complete their work in a new system, the issue is not always resistance to change. Sometimes the experience itself needs attention and is challenging users with unnecessary complexity.

PCC recognized that improving adoption would require more than additional training. The institution needed to better understand how employees actually worked and design Workday experiences that supported those existing workflows.

That shift changed the conversation from "How do we get people to use the system?" to "How do we make the system easier to use?"

The Partnership

Legato partnered with PCC to help turn user feedback into actionable improvements.

Working closely with administrative assistants, Academic Support Center staff, leadership, trainers, technical writers, and technical teams, the engagement focused on understanding how Workday fit into PCC's real campus workflows.

Requirements-gathering sessions helped identify common pain points and high-value opportunities for improvement. The team also explored Student Hub planning, documentation strategies, Workday Quicktips, Guidance Workspace capabilities, and other resources that could support future adoption efforts.

As patterns emerged, those insights were translated into a dashboard strategy designed around the needs of administrative users and ultimately tested to ensure the experience reflected how they actually worked.

Throughout the engagement, the focus remained on creating a repeatable approach PCC could continue on its own using as Workday Student planning advanced.

The Outcome

PCC gained a clearer and more intentional approach to Workday adoption.

The dashboard effort helped centralize commonly used tasks and reports, improve visibility into access and security-related information, and reduce friction in everyday workflows.

Just as importantly, the institution established a stronger foundation for future user experience efforts, connecting adoption and readiness to day-to-day work.

By addressing user experience challenges before Workday Student implementation accelerated, the institution strengthened trust, improved understanding, and demonstrated a commitment to designing systems around the people who use them every day.

Why This Story Matters

Many institutions think about adoption after implementation.

PCC's experience demonstrates the value of addressing adoption before the next phase of modernization begins.

User experience, navigation, documentation, training, and workflow design are not secondary considerations. They directly influence whether users feel confident, productive, and supported in a new system.

By learning from its HR/Finance experience and investing in usability improvements before Workday Student implementation, Portland Community College created a stronger foundation for future adoption.

The result was more than a dashboard. It was a more intentional approach to designing Workday around the people who keep campus operations running every day.