Workday Words

A common language is important for effective communication. We want to make sure you're in the
loop on all the terminology and acronyms used throughout the Workday ecosystem.* That way, you
can feel confident talking the Workday talk during your next interview or on a Workday project.

Review each section below to learn common industry, project, and Workday terms.

*Ecosystem is defined in Common Industry Terms section.

COMMON INDUSTRY TERMS

Term Description
Ecosystem An ecosystem is a network or interconnected
system. For a software company, that means all
of the different people that interact with the
software. At Workday, our ecosystem includes
our customers, consulting partners, integration
partners, and internal Workday employees.
Enterprise A synonym for business, company, or
corporation. It also includes organizations and
establishments such as universities, hospitals,
or government agencies. Enterprise refers to
any entity that makes products or delivers
services and needs to manage its human and
financial resources.
Field When a consultant is working on a project and
interacting directly with customers, they are "in
the field." At Workday, we have a team called
Field Readiness, and they prepare consultants
to effectively work with customers to deploy
Workday.
Single Source of Truth A concept used to ensure that everyone in an
organization bases business decisions on the
same data. When customers use Workday to
store all their data (e.g., transactional data,
financial data, and payroll), they can rely on the
data without worrying it is out of date or out of
sync with other systems.
Software as a Service (SaaS) Software as a Service means that the software
application itself doesn’t belong to the customer.
Instead, the customer pays for the usage of the
software (the “service”) using a subscription
model. The cost is spread evenly over the
subscription term.

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Example: For a 3 year, $3.6 million subscription,
a customer would pay $100,000 monthly,
$300,000 quarterly, or $1.2 million annually,
depending on the subscription terms.

COMMON SOFTWARE TERMS

Field Description
Integrations Software integrations allow customers to move
data between systems through an automated
process. This typically requires a software
developer, but there are some Workday-
delivered integrations that anyone can
configure. For Workday customers, integrations
may be developed by Workday, a consulting
partner, or the customer themselves.
Example: A Workday customer’s consulting
partner might develop an integration to
automatically send new hire health care benefit
information to an insurance company each
week.
Platform A collection of applications, tools, and
integrations.
Updates An update means that the software is changing
to a new version, which may include new
features and functionality, in addition to bug
fixes. Usually, an update is a major version with
significant changes from the previous major
version. Compared to a "fix," "patch," or
"maintenance release," which usually means
only bug fixes, but sometimes includes minor
features as well.

COMMON PROJECT TERMS

Field Description
Deployment/Implementation When an enterprise deploys software, this
means that the software is available for
their employees to use to perform work. For
example, if a customer deploys Workday
enterprise applications, this means that

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employees can now use Workday to
manage their financial and human
resources. To prepare for Workday
deployment, customers configure the
system for their needs, and perform other
tasks to get the software ready for their
employees to use.

Note: We use the term deployment at

Workday, but you may hear it used
interchangeably with implementation.
Statement of Work (SOW) A Statement of Work (or SOW) defines the
scope, deliverables, timelines, and costs
related to a project. SOWs are agreements
between a customer and a consulting team
to define the terms of a Workday
deployment.
User Acceptance Testing (UAT) After Workday is configured based on the
customer's requirements, the customer
validates that configuration during User
Acceptance Testing (or UAT). During the
testing period, customers report issues to
be resolved by the deployment team.
Ultimately, they sign off on the configuration
and approve it for go-live.

COMMON PROJECT ROLES

Field Description
Data Conversion Consultant A data conversion consultant is a technical role.
They take data from previous (also called
legacy) systems and reformat it to import into
Workday.
Engagement Manager On a deployment project, the engagement
manager is the primary point of contact
between the customer and the consulting team.
They ensure that the project is following the
scope and timeline agreed to in the SOW and
resolve any issues that arise.
Functional Consultant A functional consultant is an expert in one or
more areas of a business function, as well as

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the related areas in Workday. They work
directly with the customer to gather
requirements and then configure Workday to
meet those requirements.

COMMON WORKDAY TERMS

Field Description
Releases Occur twice per year and contain a significant
number of new features and functionality that
may require configuration.
Tenant A unique instance of the Workday product with
a separate set of data held in a logically
separated databases. Each customer has
several tenants:
 The Production tenant holds the most
accurate and up-to-date data and is
"live" for workers to use.
 Other tenants, like Implementation,
Sandbox, and Preview for example, are
considered "lower tenants." Customers
use those to test new updates and
configurations before rolling the
changes into the Production tenant.
Workday Community A portal for customer information and
communications. Provides detailed roadmaps,
schedules, update and release notes,
announcements, webinars, and documentation
associated with changes delivered in updates.
Workday-delivered vs. Customer-defined Customer-defined data, also called tenanted
(tenanted) data, is customer specific and customer
configurable. It does not get shared across
tenants with other customers.
For example: Customers define the business
locations for their company.

Workday-delivered data is built into the system

and is the same for all customers.
For example: Workday delivers and maintains a
standard list of countries to use in addresses
that all customers use.