Ascend | Stormloop Coffee Chat: Workday Financials Overview
On June 21st, 2023 Stormloop and partner Ascend got together to host a Coffee Chat to discuss how to know if your “Your Workday Financial System Is Healthy?” In this Coffee Chat, Lynea Long from Stormloop and Troy Peters from Ascend spoke about key things to review regarding your Workday system’s stability. Could your system benefit from a Stormloop Health Check? Could you add in automation to reduce manual effort around month-end close & other regular FIN activities?
Below is a summary of the Coffee Chat and the Key Takeaways. You can always watch the full recording on Ascend’s website found here: https://www.ascendsoftware.com/is-your-workday-financial-system-healthy
What is a Health Check? A Health Check is an all-encompassing Workday Financials review that overviews security, reports, integrations, and your FDM. The first step is a Self Evaluation Form that will prompt for detail regarding your tenant and processes. Then, Stormloop leaders will review the responses, provide feedback and recommendations, and schedule time to review these with client stakeholders in a Health Check Review meeting.
Use the concept of PLAY ;
PLAN - Do a Stability Check. From a day-to-day standpoint, where do your teams or processes need improvement? From a project perspective, what’s in the pipeline and what are the projects’ impacts?
LINE UP - Align your teams & stakeholders. Collaborate on priorities and work schedules to implement improvements and projects alike.
ACTION - Execute the plan following your project management guidelines.
YEARLY - Repeat this process annually, improving with each turn.
When does checking in on your Workday tenant health make sense?
You are unable to get new features going because you are too busy putting out fires or troubleshooting issues for end users.
Your accounting team is working over the weekends to meet deadlines.
You are manually doing bank reconciliation.
You have operational journals in error on a regular basis.
Internal/External auditors don't have access to compliance reports.
Anomalies in custom financial reports you can’t explain (ex: blank lines on income statement or cash flows).
End users are experiencing issues completing or submitting expense reports.
Fixed Assets out of balance.
Integrations are failing or not including correct data.
Can’t quickly process AP or AR, by this we mean are invoices not being entered, approved, or paid with vendor payment terms due to Workday delays.
You are missing elements on invoices or have issues with your invoice data entry. *These are two of the most common issues missing data or over-engineering invoice data in terms of processing*
Business processes are stalling at approval or routing incorrectly.
Who is Ascend: Ascend is an AP Automation software company & Workday-Certified Select Partner. Their software team has visibility into Workday releases, allowing them to plan and update their software with each cycle to maintain stability with Workday’s growth.
What is AP automation? There are two general categories of automation in accounts payable to explore - invoice processing and payment automation.
In Invoice Processing, automation, invoice creation is automated to reduce manual entry and optimize the invoice-related business process flows with Workday.
Payment Automation is a new feature on Ascend’s roadmap for future release. Through automation of supplier payments, payment files will be reviewed by Ascend and transmitted to vendors, reducing costs and processing time for fulfilling supplier invoices.
Stormloop hopes that these basic discussions & self-reflection expose opportunities for enhancement and improved stability to reduce the time and money spent maintaining the system
Ready to get started on a Stormloop Health Check?
Contact Tommy Duong at Stormloop to get started at tommy.duong@stormlooptech.com
Want to learn more about Ascend’s AP Automation?
Ascend Case Studies: https://www.ascendsoftware.com/case-studies-0
Contact: Larry Robinett at lrobinett@ascendsoftware.com
