Most Workday customers don’t have the luxury of having a specific person for each role (such as those listed below) you need for a Workday support team. So, I talk about roles vs. positions. A person’s position and job description often include aspects of several different ‘roles’ from the list below. 

Here is a sample list of roles that I feel are a good starting point as you consider what you need to fully support Workday, along with a short description of each. 

Workday Administrator:
Responsible for the overall management and configuration of the Workday system, including things such as security, integrations, and customization. While others may do configuration in test tenants, this person may be the one responsible for migrating the configuration changes to the Production tenant.

Workday Functional Analyst:
Works closely with business stakeholders to gather business requirements and provide ongoing support for functional issues. This role may or may not have access to configure Workday to meet business needs.

Technical Analyst/Developer/Programmer:
Handles the more technical aspects of Workday, such as integrations, report development, and custom application development using things like Workday Studio, Extend, Prism, Orchestration, etc.

Security Administrator:
Manages user access and security roles within the Workday system, ensuring proper permissions and access controls are in place.

BP Administrator:
Manages the Business Process configuration changes. Works with the Functional Analysts, Testing Analysts, and Training to deploy changes to the Production tenant.

Data Analyst/Report Writer: 
Analyzes data within Workday to provide insights and support decision-making processes. This role may involve creating reports, dashboards, and potentially building data objects in Workday Prism for reporting purposes.

Training Specialist: 
Develops and delivers job aids and training programs for end-users to ensure they understand how to use Workday effectively and efficiently.

Workday Support Analyst: 
Provides frontline support for Workday users, troubleshooting level 1 type issues, answering questions, and escalating more complex issues to level 2 or level 3 team members.

Testing / Quality Assurance (QA) Coordinator: 
Plans and executes testing activities for Workday updates, enhancements, and new features to ensure system functionality and data integrity.  Performs testing and quality assurance activities to ensure Workday configurations, integrations, and customizations meet business requirements and standards.

Change Management Specialist: 
Facilitates organizational change related to Workday implementations or updates, including communication, training, and stakeholder engagement.

Project Manager: 
Oversees Workday projects, coordinates activities, manages timelines and budgets, and ensures successful delivery of project objectives.

Release Manager: 
Manages the release process for Workday updates and patches, coordinating with vendors and stakeholders to schedule and deploy changes with minimal disruption.

Compliance Specialist: 
Ensures that Workday configurations and processes comply with relevant laws, regulations, and industry standards, such as GDPR, SOX, HIPAA, or documentation retention policies. 

Vendor Relationship Manager: 
Acts as the primary liaison between the organization and Workday or other third-party vendors, managing contracts, service agreements, and vendor performance.

Titles with “Administrator” in them- For me, this typically means that these roles have the ability to make configuration changes within Workday. They may only have access to do this in test tenants, or they may have access to also update the Production tenant.

Named Support Contacts (NSC):
Each Workday customer must identify one or more people from their support team who will be designated as Named Support Contacts. These staff will be set up in the Workday corporate systems to enter support tickets on behalf of your company. The number of NSCs you can have varies based on your total number of employees. Usually, the number of NSCs is around 6. 

HRIS/HCM/FIN Directors:
Depending on your company size, you will have team leaders, managers, or directors over the Workday support team(s). Examples of titles include HRIS Director, HCM Director, FIN (financial) Systems Director, etc. Oftentimes, these individuals will be ‘working managers’, which simply means that, in addition to overseeing the staff on a given team, they also have responsibilities for maintaining some area of the system, such as creating reports or being the primary support person for a given module like Workday Talent or Expenses. Other managers/directors are completely focused on managing the staff on their team.

This will vary by Workday customer and the Workday modules that they utilize. Some of these roles will cover all of the Workday modules, while others may focus on Workday Finance, Workday HCM, or even specific modules within those areas. For example, you may have a Workday Functional Analyst focused on Finance, HCM, Student, or focused on a specific module such as Workday Talent or Recruiting. 

These roles may be combined into a position and could vary in their titles and responsibilities depending on the organization’s structure and requirements. But this typically covers the key functions needed to effectively support and maintain a Workday system.

How about you? What other roles have seen helpful at Workday customers?