Air Liquide: Workday Rollout To 30 Countries

Client: Air Liquide  |  Programme: Workday HCM rollout, about 30 countries  |  Integrator: IBM  |  Our role: cutover management

Air Liquide moved its HR processes onto Workday HCM across about 30 countries: France head office, the rest of Europe, AMEI and North America. We led the cutover for the Core and Global modules, with one global approach and one detailed plan that every region and workstream could work from.

The challenge: one Workday go-live, many countries and teams

A Workday cutover is mostly configuration, data and integrations rather than infrastructure. Across 30 countries, that means many local HR teams, several time zones, an integrator building and loading, middleware teams switching interfaces, and business teams who have to be ready on the day. Each group can have its own plan. Nobody owns the sequence between them unless someone is asked to.

Air Liquide needed that sequence owned: what happens, in what order, who does it, and who decides when to go.

What we did

• Defined one global cutover approach. A single document, readable from the programme board to the local hubs, covering how the Workday go-live would be run across regions.
• Built one detailed plan across all workstreams. HR digital, local hubs, integrations, data migration, change management and IT support each contributed their activities to a single consolidated plan, instead of parallel plans.
• Worked with IBM and the middleware teams. We kept the integrator’s build and load activities, the interface switch-overs and the business activities in the same sequence, with dependencies visible.
• Coordinated the regions. We worked with AMEI and North America, and with local and global business teams, so that regional constraints were in the plan from the start.
• Tracked activities with workstream leads. Each lead owned the readiness of their area. We followed progress against the plan and kept communication running through one rhythm.
• Partnered with change management and IT support. Business go-live readiness and the handover to support were planned together with the cutover, not after it.

How we approach a Workday cutover

The principle is the one we apply on every programme: one team, one plan. A tool does not align people, so the plan is written in plain language, with an owner and a duration for each task, so that someone other than the expert can follow a dependency or step in as backup.

What this means for your Workday programme

• Start cutover planning while the roadmap can still change. Gate criteria, data collection cycles and training dates are easier to set early. We advise engaging a cutover manager 6 to 9 months before go-live on a large programme.
• Treat the client as the owner of its data. The integrator runs the loads; the business signs off the data. The cutover plan has to show both.
• Keep a neutral person between client and integrator. A cutover manager who sits across business, IT and the integrator settles the “who does what” questions quickly, especially during execution.

For the method behind this work, read our guide Navigating Workday cutover and download the Workday cutover approach template. The framework is described in the CMS cutover framework. We also delivered the payroll rollout across 18 European countries for Air Liquide.

Is a Workday go-live on your roadmap? Our free cutover health check shows where your cutover stands, or see our cutover management services.