June 2023 - i8CLOUD

Workday Adaptive Planning- A Strategic approach

Workday Adaptive Planning is a cloud-based financial planning and analysis solution. It enables complex financial models without the burden of managing legacy on-premise systems or massive spreadsheets. It saves finance teams the mind-numbing, error-prone task of manually consolidating data. More than 2,600 companies in 85 countries use Adaptive Planning. These range from mid-sized companies and non-profits to large corporations, including AAA, Boston Scientific, CORT, Konica Minolta, NetSuite, Philips, and Siemens.

In Adaptive numbers can be stored using up to 9 decimal places. Use the Trunc or Round Functions to ensure accuracy of the data.

Workday Adaptive Planning make better decisions faster with flexible and easy-to-use enterprise planning software. It easily connects with any ERP/GL or other data sources.It includes

a) Financial Planning: Flexible budgeting, scenario planning, and reporting let us plan continuously for what’s next and respond to changes with agility.

b) Workforce Planning- It is the systematic process for identifying and addressing the gaps between the workforce of today and the human capital needs of tomorrow. Plan for the skills you need today and tomorrow by department, cost center, level, location, and more.

c) Sales Planning- Dynamically plan sales resources, set quotas, and optimize rep capacity—all while keeping your eye on the bottom line.

d) Operational Planning- Enable company-wide planning in concert with finance and drive better collaboration across departments and functions.

You and other users at your company access your model from a computer or mobile device using a standard web browser. Regular backups, hardware redundancy, and industry-leading data access control keep your data safe and secure.

Multidimensional Benefits

Use your HCM and Financials data in your Adaptive Planning financial, headcount, and workforce plan versions.
Publish approved Adaptive Planning financial, headcount, or workforce plan versions and make them available to Workday Core.
Use Financials to budget check transactions against your published financial plans.
Create positions in HCM using your published headcount and workforce plan versions.
Reconcile financial transactions or actions in HCM with your published financial, headcount, or workforce plan versions so that you can compare your plan to actuals.

Primary Business Advantages

OfficeConnect is a big time saver as it allows for instant access to data for operations and drives greater analysis.
Ability to model and budget off KPI’s and build department specific budgets.
Ability to model multiple scenarios with relative ease. The ability to change an assumption enables quick analysis of multiple scenarios

Besides being a numerous advantages, there is scope of improvement for upcoming new releases like in case of big volume of user sheets, the ability to place models in folders based on purpose or function does not exist.

There are other alternatives also available in the market for such kind of analytics what we do in Workday Adaptive Planning like Oracle and IBM analytics. Hence, continuous updation and addition of new features become necessary to survive.

Author: Priyanka Verma

Workday Consultant at i8CLOUD

Source: Workday and Community

Leadership in a start-up firm

There have been several research on the kinds of leadership in start-up firms. A result of this brainstorming has evolved a term “Entrepreneurial Leadership” which encompasses the concepts of entrepreneurship and leadership. For every entrepreneurial venture the kind of leadership and theories associated cannot be generalized. Most of the start-ups see failures due to proper leadership behaviour. The foundation and progression of any new venture is essentially connected. Bass and Stogdill have coined very sensibly.

Leadership is an interaction between two or more members of a group that often involves a structuring or restructuring of the situation and the perceptions and expectations of members . Leadership occurs when one group member modifies the motivation or competencies of others in the group. Any member of the group can exhibit some amount of leadership

Entrepreneurial Leadership:-

It describes a person influencing and directing another person towards a certain action or way of thinking in the context of a start-up.

If we drill down into literature, authors have not specifically spoken about entrepreneurial leadership, but they have emphasized more on the Management based on the operations of any organization. Essentially the leadership depends on various variables like size of the organization, processes, structure, scope, networks, distribution channels, mode of operations and the size of investment at various time periods. Generally, to resolve the queries pertaining to these factors situational theories of leadership play very important role and sometimes contingent theory also justifies it. Delegation, support, coach and direct can guide employees at various scenarios and to certain extent evolve as a good technique for development of the firm. But entrepreneurial leadership describes a person influencing and directing another person. Towards a certain action or way of thinking in the context of the entrepreneurial venture. Transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire Management are mostly talk of the towns in context to start-ups.

Hence, these leaders transform people associated with them for the development of the organization. Transformational leaders explore new ways of working, seek opportunities in the face of risk. Prefer effective answers to efficient answers and are less likely to support the status quo.

Transactional leadership :-

It is characterized by contingent reward and management by exception. In other words, a leader clarifies and communicates to the follower what is expected and what they will receive if these expectations are met. It’s considered to be receivables for the expectations of the workers.

Laissez-faire leadership :-

It is also known as delegative leadership, is a type of Management style in which leaders are hands-off and allow group members to make the decisions. Not all organizations are suitable for laissez-faire leaders. This style is most effective when leader supervises team of highly skilled individuals. In many cases, team members will have a higher level of skill than leader or diversified in which leader has no idea in. For start-ups if the team is highly skilled and small in size than this type of leadership can work really well. If the team size is big than the delegation may result into loosing chain of command. It needs to be chosen carefully.

Goleman Daniel has described six types of Management style in Harvard Business Review which can get results based on different kind of situations and these might work well in case of start-ups.

· Commanding- It demands immediate compliance

· Visionary- Mobilize people towards a relevant vision

· Affiliative- It creates harmony and builds emotional bonds

· Democratic- It forges consensus through participation.

· Pacesetting-It sets high standards for performance

· Coaching- It develops people for future

These styles can be opted at various situations and circumstances for a firm. It depends upon various factors for a leader to use it accordingly.

Leadership can make it or break it all, as the entire value system percolates down from the top. So, its important to identify the style and type of leadership a start-up opts for.

Author: Priyanka Verma

Manager Consulting Services

References: Sage Publications, Harvard Business Review

Basics of Workday Time Tracking

Workday Time Tracking is a time-and-attendance monitoring tool accessible from anywhere and anytime, both online and on mobile devices. There are a number of compelling reasons why time tracking software is critically needed. Time and attendance software keeps track of everyone’s activities in real time. So everyone knows what everyone else is up to and how they can be reached if necessary.

Workday TT is little bit magical. It enables to run extensive reports that provide exact information on all strategic emphasis areas like time tracking, absence and collective performance at the touch of a button. Managers and HR teams may make confident and well-informed decisions that will boost a company’s overall performance in all areas.

Time Entry on various modes

Workday Time Tracking provides self-service time entry, allowing any employee to record their work hours using a web browser or mobile device. Check-in and check-out times for an employee are automatically time-and-date stamped using Workday’s mobile and online time clocks.

A worker can also use an intuitive calendar view to record time against projects which can be customized to include time clock event data like in/out times and work tags for overtime as well. Workday also allows to track and analyses data from team members all around the world in case of having a global workforce.

Real Time Calculations

Workday Time Tracking comes with a time calculation engine that enables us to calculate employee work hours in real time. Before finalizing the payroll for the pay period, the time calculation option can be used to record extra hours, double-time rates, days of absence, and more.

Managers can examine and approve all of their staff’ work schedules at once. Workday Time Tracking even offers an exception management function that indicates unusual time entries so managers can investigate what’s causing them.

Workday’s Configurable Business Process framework could be used to automate any operation in the company. In addition to payroll and time tracking. These automating workforce management tasks helps to minimize compliance concerns. By preventing anyone from manually interfering with employee hours and pay rates.

Workday Time Tracking Calendar

Workday calendar view displays the status of worker time entries – regular time, double time, overtime etc.

A worker can click on Submit to confirm the timesheet for a given pay period – weekly, bi weekly, monthly or semimonthly. But the Submit button only shows up if there is at least one entry. The Submit screen allows a worker to review the work hours and add comments. It also shows the status of the timesheet for the pay period – submitted, not submitted, requires attention, approved, and denied.

After the time sheet is submitted, If the manager doesn’t approve the submitted hours. They can send back or deny the timesheet. If the manager sends it back, worker will get a notification in the email and in the Work feed. Worker can then correct and resubmit the timesheet.

Employees also can see Alerts containing helpful information and Errors that need to be resolved before the timesheet is submitted.

It’s a growth focus system

Another reason of having Workday Time Tracking is that it consolidates and brings together all the accounting, financial planning, reporting, and analytics under one virtual roof. Management will get clear insight and a foundation for financial control and budgeting that ultimately leads to increased profitability. It will help to understand how long an employee takes to complete a task. And ultimately how much it will end up costing an organization. Managers will also be able to identify the root causes of time and absenteeism trends clearly.

Advantages of having Workday Time Tracking

Everyone gets benefits from the effective time management system. Employees can set and approve their own schedules in terms of regular and overtime working hours. Detailed real-time data will help managers make better decisions and will alert management on routinely basis. The key benefits are time and money savings and increase overall productivity. Workday Time Tracking can be combined with Workday Absence Management, Workday Human Capital Management, and Workday Payroll in a single package.

KNOWING ABOUT DATA PROTECTION-GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a set of data protection rules issued by the European Union on May 25, 2018. GDPR has brought about a need for employers to reconsider how they collect, use, and store personal data. It aims to safeguard the personal data and privacy of EU citizens, protecting them from fraudulent activities and theft.

The seven key principles of GDPR are as follows:

Lawfulness, fairness and transparency
Purpose limitation
Data minimization
Accuracy
Storage limitation
Integrity and confidentiality(security)
Accountability
GDPR protects two types of data:

Personal Data: This includes basic identity information such as name, address, and ID numbers.
Sensitive Personal Data: This encompasses web data like location, IP address, cookie data, as well as health and genetic data, biometric data, racial or ethnic data, and political opinions.

Applications of GDPR include:

Data protection for major worldwide, as GDPR necessitates a compliance strategy.
Optimizing digital payments with data-centric security to maintain control from entry to endpoint.
Using universal tokens with diverse schemes to meet business needs and compliance requirements

GDPR applies not only to organizations within the European Union but also to organizations outside the EU that offer goods or services to EU customers or businesses. This means that almost every major corporation worldwide needs a GDPR compliance strategy.

Data Protection: Workday and GDPR:

Workday was one of the first companies to obtain Privacy Shield certification. It helps simplify compliance with regulatory changes, including GDPR, by providing a single cloud-based HR system to manage employee data. This system offers complete, real-time insights and superior control over sensitive information. Workday includes three features that align with GDPR requirements:

Restricted access to certain data through conditional role-based security groups.
Easy purging of personal data, such as government IDs, other IDs, gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.
Maintenance of an audit trail that records all system changes with detailed information.

Privacy policies may undergo future changes, and organizations can adapt and progress by taking the necessary steps to comply.

How to overcome fear of speaking in meetings

Meetings are an essential component of doing business. After the Covid crisis, virtual meetings have become more of a necessity. Meeting anxiety, also known as public speaking anxiety or fear of speaking in front of others, can make a person nervous and fearful when participating in professional engagements or situations, especially when it comes to speaking up in meetings.

Prepare before the meeting :-

It’s always beneficial to take a few minutes to prepare before the start of the meeting. Having the meeting agenda in advance helps understand the purpose of the meeting. Set aside some time to gather important points and thoughts about the issues that will be discussed, along with possible solutions. Engaging with the information shared and providing feedback demonstrates active participation.

Communicate effectively :-

Being open and upfront in meetings about your thought process is important. You can enhance your communication by using phrases such as, “There are many pros and cons if we finalize this decision, but if I have to make a decision right now, I would choose X,” or “I will be able to finish this work by this time today.” It’s also helpful to appreciate others’ thoughts while suggesting alternative approaches, such as saying, “I appreciate your thoughts, but I think we could also do it X way. Let’s arrange another meeting to discuss this further.” Using different phrases like these can initiate or conclude discussions effectively.

Always relax yourself :-

Deep belly breathing is a perfect technique for reducing stress and increasing confidence. Repeating positive mantras like “You deserve to be here” or “You can do it” can help tune out worries and focus on the meeting at hand.

Review your performance :-

Evaluating your performance after the meeting is beneficial in identifying areas for improvement. Make note of any positive feedback you receive about your performance, so you can refer to it before your next meeting or presentation.

Conclusion :-

Overcoming meeting anxiety enables active participation in day-to-day meetings with clients and internal teams and allows for real-time feedback. It’s important to recognize that not everyone needs to have new ideas to share every time they speak. Some individuals prefer to think things through before making decisions and speaking up. Others may interpret this as a lack of confidence, a fear of appearing foolish, or a reluctance to speak in front of others, which can hinder accountability. It’s crucial to confront these perceptions to avoid potential damage to one’s career.

i8CLOUD

Monthly Archives: June 2023