How Colleges and Universities Can Evaluate Workday Consulting Support
Author: Ryan Kent | David Kent Consulting
The Challenge With Evaluating Workday Consulting Firms
When a college or university starts evaluating Workday consulting firms, the instinct is to apply the same criteria used for any large engagement: experience, references, team size, price. Those factors matter. But choosing a Workday consulting firm in higher education has a few dimensions that don’t surface in a standard RFP.
Workday is still relatively new to higher education, particularly Workday Student. The institutions that have gone live represent a fraction of the Banner-era installed base. That means the pool of consultants with direct higher ed Workday experience is smaller than it appears from the outside, and firms that market broadly don’t always have the depth a project of this scale requires.
Here’s what to look for, and what to ask.
Key Takeaways
Area | What to Know |
Module-Specific Experience | Workday HCM, Finance, and Student are different products with different implementation realities. Confirm depth in the specific module you’re implementing. |
Partner vs. Independent | Workday implementation partners implement. Independent advisors help you plan, evaluate, and oversee. Both have a role. Knowing which you need changes how you evaluate. |
Staffing Reality | The people on the sales call are rarely the people on the project. Get specific names and backgrounds before signing. |
Timeline | Workday Student implementations in higher ed routinely run 2–4 years. Proposals that suggest significantly less deserve scrutiny. |
Data Migration | Most higher ed institutions are migrating from Banner or another legacy system. That workstream carries significant risk and requires hands-on experience, not theoretical knowledge. |
Workday Higher Education Is a Niche Within a Niche
Workday is widely deployed in corporate HR and Finance. Higher education is different territory, and Workday Student is in a category of its own.
Workday HCM and Finance have a longer history in higher ed, and there is reasonable market depth. Workday Student is newer, with fewer institutions fully live and a corresponding shortage of consultants who have been through a complete implementation from Banner migration to go-live. A firm with extensive Workday Student experience in financial services has not necessarily dealt with a Registrar environment, IPEDS reporting requirements, or academic catalog complexity at scale.
When you’re evaluating Workday consulting firms, the first question isn’t whether they know Workday. It’s whether they know Workday in higher education, and specifically whether they have direct experience with the module you’re implementing.
Ask for references from institutions similar in size and type to yours. Ask how many Workday Student implementations they’ve completed specifically in higher education, not Workday implementations broadly. The answer will tell you more than any capability slide.
Understand the Difference Between a Workday Implementation Partner and an Independent Advisor
Workday has a formal partner ecosystem. Certified Workday implementation partners are authorized to implement Workday and have a direct relationship with Workday as a vendor. Most large-scale Workday implementations in higher education are led by one of these Workday partner companies.
That doesn’t mean all your consulting support needs to come through a partner, and it doesn’t mean all partners are equivalent. There’s a meaningful distinction between implementation partners, who configure and deploy the system, and independent advisors, who help you plan the engagement, evaluate partner proposals, define scope, and provide oversight throughout the project.
The two roles aren’t mutually exclusive. Some institutions bring in an independent firm specifically to evaluate partner proposals and keep the implementation accountable to institutional priorities. Others use independent consultants for specific workstreams where their primary partner lacks depth, with Banner-to-Workday data migration being a common example. Knowing what role you’re filling helps you evaluate the right kind of firm.
Know Which Workday Consultant Roles You Actually Need, and When
Workday implementations require different functional and technical roles depending on where you are in the project. Planning and scoping looks different from go-live support, which looks different from post-implementation optimization.
Successful Workday projects are rarely just technical implementations. Institutions also need to prepare for operational change management: shifts in ownership, process redesign, decentralized decision-making, training expectations, and adoption across functional offices. Firms that understand higher education culture tend to plan for those realities earlier.
Don’t let a staffing plan slide past you without knowing who will actually do the work. Many proposals feature senior partners on the cover page and reassign junior resources once the contract is signed. Ask for specific names and backgrounds for the people assigned to day-to-day work, not just whoever is presenting. When you check references, ask directly: “Were the people you met in the sales process the people who worked on your project?”
Get Realistic About Workday Implementation Timelines
Workday implementation timelines are frequently understated, particularly for Workday Student. Vendor estimates and early partner proposals often suggest 18–24 months. The actual experience at most institutions migrating from Banner is closer to 2–4 years from contract to full go-live.
That gap isn’t always a failure. Higher education environments are genuinely complex. Banner data migration is non-trivial. Shared governance slows decisions. Academic calendars create hard blackout windows for go-live. A consulting firm that has been through this before will scope accordingly. One that hasn’t will give you a timeline that looks competitive in the proposal and becomes a recurring problem 18 months in.
Ask the firms you’re evaluating to walk you through a realistic timeline for an institution your size. Ask what the most common causes of delay are, and how they plan for them. If they struggle to answer, that tells you something.
What Separates the Best Higher Education Workday Consultants From the Rest
A proposal can look polished without revealing much about actual capability. Here’s where to look more closely:
Higher education experience, not just Workday experience. This is the single biggest differentiator. Workday expertise is table stakes. What most firms can’t replicate is deep, firsthand experience inside higher education institutions: understanding how a Registrar’s office actually works, how financial aid processes differ from commercial payroll, how faculty governance affects timeline decisions, how institutional culture shapes adoption. The consultants who have lived this in higher ed bring judgment that no amount of Workday certification replaces. Ask directly whether they’ve worked inside higher education, or only consulted to it.
Banner data migration experience. Most higher ed institutions moving to Workday are coming from Banner or a comparable legacy ERP/SIS. Clean data migration is one of the highest-risk workstreams in the project. Ask for specific examples of how they’ve handled it, not just a general methodology description.
Higher ed regulatory depth. Title IV, IPEDS, state reporting, accreditation compliance: these don’t pause during an implementation. Firms with genuine higher ed experience build compliance requirements into the project from the start rather than treating them as a separate track.
Post-implementation support planning. Whoever leads the implementation doesn’t necessarily need to be your long-term support partner, but they should be thinking about post-go-live from day one. How will the system be maintained? Who handles annual Workday feature releases? How are configuration changes governed after the implementation team is gone? A firm that’s thinking about the end state from the beginning will make better decisions throughout the project. Ask what their handoff and support planning process looks like before you sign.
When evaluating the best Workday implementation partners for your institution, the answers to these questions will tell you far more than any capability presentation. For more on how Kent approaches Workday consulting for higher education, see our Workday Consulting Services page.
Working With a Workday Consulting Firm That Understands Higher Education
Choosing among Workday consulting firms isn’t just a procurement exercise. It’s a decision that will shape your institution’s operations for years. The right partner brings Workday product depth, higher education context, and the experience to set realistic expectations before the project starts.
At David Kent Consulting, we help institutions navigate the Workday journey through readiness planning, implementation oversight, operational alignment, and post-go-live optimization support. Our role is centered on helping higher education institutions reduce risk, improve decision-making, and bridge the gap between technology projects and institutional operations Our team has worked inside higher education, not just consulted to it.
If you’re starting that evaluation, or trying to get a second opinion on a project already in motion, we’d be glad to compare notes. Contact us to start the conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Workday implementation partners are certified by Workday and authorized to implement the product. Independent consultants operate outside that ecosystem, which gives them more flexibility and objectivity. Independent advisors are often most valuable during planning and procurement: scoping the project, evaluating partner proposals, and establishing accountability. They’re also valuable in workstreams where the primary partner lacks specific depth.
Full Workday Student implementations in higher education typically run 2-4 years from contract to go-live, depending on institutional complexity, legacy data volume, and the number of modules in scope. Proposals that suggest 12-18 months for a full implementation should be examined carefully. Ask specifically what is and isn’t included in that timeline.
Workday staff augmentation is most useful when the institution lacks sufficient internal bandwidth or specialized expertise to hold up its end of the implementation partnership. Common use cases include functional leadership with Banner-to-Workday experience, data conversion specialists, testing coordinators, and project management support. Staff augmentation consultants work within the institution’s team rather than as part of the SI.
Some firms have depth across both modules, but evaluate each separately. Workday Student and Workday Finance have different functional complexity, different institutional stakeholders, and different configuration requirements. Ask for separate references for each rather than treating prior Workday experience as interchangeable.
Ask who specifically will be assigned to your project, how many Workday Student implementations they’ve completed in higher education, what their Banner data migration approach looks like, and what a realistic timeline is for an institution your size. Reference checks with comparable institutions are essential. Ask references directly whether the team on the engagement matched what was promised in the sales process.
The best Workday consulting firms for higher education combine deep platform expertise with firsthand institutional experience. Look for firms that have completed Workday implementations specifically in higher ed (not just corporate environments), have Banner data migration experience, understand Title IV and IPEDS compliance, and can provide named consultant backgrounds rather than just firm credentials. Independent advisory firms and staff augmentation providers fill different roles than certified implementation partners, so evaluate based on what your institution actually needs.
About the Author
Ryan Kent is a higher education and healthcare IT leader with experience leading ERP and EMR transformations at universities and health systems across the United States. At David Kent Consulting, his work focuses on helping colleges and universities navigate the organizational and technical complexity of large-scale system implementations.
About David Kent Consulting
David Kent Consulting is a higher education ERP consulting firm specializing in Workday, Banner, and Oracle implementations. We work alongside institutions as an independent advisory and delivery partner throughout every phase of complex technology projects. Our senior-only team brings decades of hands-on experience in higher education IT.
