In even the calmest of times, your WFM solution may not be giving you all you need. It’s important to occasionally review that solution and how it aligns with your operational goals. That’s what a WFM Health Check is all about.
There are many reasons why you may need a Health Check. We’ve compiled three of the most common. These are situations we see on a regular basis. They also tend to be the times a Health Check is most likely to have an immediate impact felt across your organization.
It may be time to think about doing a WFM Health Check if:
- You need to upgrade your WFM solution
- Your current solution has had several updates
- You have recently undergone a merger or acquisition
A WFM Health Check to Help Plan For an Upgrade
This is a familiar situation for many WFM professionals. You’ve been on your current WFM solution for a while but recently something’s changed. Maybe it’s not working as well as it used to. Maybe you’ve outgrown it. Your more mature WFM practice needs a solution that can keep up. Or maybe your vendor is sunsetting your current version and soon it won’t be supported.
The question is, why perform a Health Check if you’re about to do an upgrade? The answer is surprisingly simple. You need to understand exactly what you need to look for in your new system.
If you’re being forced to upgrade, this is important because you likely haven’t really been noticing where shortfalls are happening. If you’re upgrading because you’ve outgrown your current solution, a Health Check is a great way to prepare. It will help you understand what features and elements you need to make your new system as efficient and useful as possible.
At Axsium, we see quite a few of these kinds of Health Checks. For instance, our UKG Health Check helps our clients optimize and improve their solution’s business and technical performance to match evolving business needs. We focus on helping our clients take advantage of the latest functionality available as well as functional and technical industry best practices. And our experts ensure our clients know exactly what they need from their new solution.
Using a WFM Health Check to Explore System Updates
Modern WFM solutions are increasingly being offered as Software as a Service (SaaS). It’s incredibly useful, hosting your solution in the cloud. But it does have one significant problem.
If you’re like me, your phone seems to update every couple of days. With those constant updates, it’s hard to stay up to speed on everything your phone can do. SaaS WFM solutions are very similar. They update regularly and many organizations find it tough to keep up.
These updates increase your solution’s functionality and give you useful new features. They’re an important part making sure your solution keeps up with your needs. But it’s hard to take advantage of that if you don’t know what there is to take advantage of.
That’s where the Health Check comes in. A Health Check gives you the opportunity to find what we call “hidden functionality.” That’s when you either aren’t aware or are unable to take advantage of new functionality available from recent updates.
During a WFM Health Check, you’ll define what you want to be getting from your WFM solution. The Health Check also lays out what your WFM solution can give you to address your current challenges and identify opportunities and process improvements. This means you can align the two as closely as possible. It may seem like a minor process, but this can be an organizationally transformational moment.
Aligning Your Practice with a WFM Health Check
Sometimes clients ask us to perform a WFM Health Check for a very specific reason. They need us to help bring disparate WFM practices and solutions into alignment. There are a few different reasons this can happen. The most common we see is after an organization has gone through an acquisition or merger.
In this case, you’re usually faced with two different WFM solutions that need to be slimmed down to one. In fact, you often see two entirely different approaches to WFM itself. The sooner you and your new colleagues are working on the same page the better.
A Health Check is a vital tool to understanding what your newly altered organization needs and how your solution can accommodate and let that happen. Through a detailed study of your WFM practice, the WFM Health Check provides a clear scope and recommendations to bring the two disparate WFM approaches and systems together.
Ideally, a well-performed Health Check will give you one recommended approach with the relevant advantages and challenges. At Axsium, we often also find options for improving your business processes during the Health Check. We don’t just help you get back where you were before the acquisition or merger. We give you the tools to improve beyond it.
What Next?
If any of these three situations sound familiar, your organization would likely benefit from a WFM Health Check. So, what next? I might be biased, but in my opinion it’s time to get in touch with Axsium. We have the experience and expertise to get you where you need to be, no matter why you need that Health Check.