Pay for Growth, Not Just Performance: Rethinking How To Use Consultants

We saw this comment on another LinkedIn post this week and it resonated with us. Read on to find out why.

Myth of Knowledge Transfer

In Workday Student implementation projects, there's a checkbox in the Workday-affiliated implementation consultants' Workset Playbook for when they've completed "Knowledge Transfer." This is typically checked after the topic has been presented one time to an institution -- yes, one time.

Have you learned anything Workday-related after being told one time?

Neither have we.

Implementation Participation ≠ Mastery

Each aspect of Workday Student (such as registration) is complex and contains many interlocking pieces (e.g., Academic Period Date Controls + Registration Appointments + Enrollment Access and Grading Policy).

Mastery over this complex system comes only with time, practice, and most importantly, real time transactional data.

Implementation testing cannot and will not lead to mastery. Institutions erroneously believe their project team will naturally master essential skills simply by participating in the implementation and interacting with the vendor-affiliated implementation expert consultants.

Implementing Workday Student is very different than managing the system to support institution operations.

After vendor-affiliated implementation consultants roll off the project (usually after just one round of live registration) your inexperienced, and often exhausted, team is on their own to manage the remaining major system milestones like grading and graduation. On top of that, they are expected to drive these processes with minimal experience of live data and only a novice understanding of the system.

Invest in Workday, Invest in Your Team

Institutions that invest in hands-on support and coaching during the two years after go-live see real payoff. By the end of that critical stabilization period, they’ve built strong, capable teams who can troubleshoot issues, dig into advanced analysis, and keep their Workday Student system running like a well-oiled machine.

As an institution, your goal isn’t just to get through go-live—it’s to build a team that can run the system with confidence and clarity. That means investing in more than just performance during implementation. When your team can spot issues, solve them quickly, and feel confident doing it, everything runs smoother—especially the student experience. Because when your internal team is strong, student-support is at its best. That’s the kind of long-term success worth investing in.

Consultants and Coaches

At Legato, we started in higher education and consider ourselves part of the higher ed community. We can transform systems and the teams that run them because we approach the task with expert knowledge coupled with an educator's heart. This makes us different.

What Legato customers say:

"Legato actually cares about how things work beyond the implementation. They want the important processes your users will experience with the new product to not just work but work well and in a better way than you had before."

- Director of Infrastructure and Enterprise Applications, Rhodes College

When you're ready to invest in your team, just as you invested in Workday, reach out and let's chat about how to get your system and your team up to speed.

Or, click here to schedule a complimentary consultation to brainstorm solutions for your team.