ERP migrations are rarely interesting from the outside. From the inside, they are the difference between a business that can scale and one that can’t. Here are five lessons from a recent integration between Workday HCM and a 1C-based system — written from the operating floor, not the slide deck.
1. Map the process, not the system
The temptation in any migration is to think field-by-field: this column maps to that column, this entity to that entity. It works as documentation, and fails as implementation. What matters is the underlying process — how a termination is recorded, how an approval flows, how a country-specific labor rule changes the data model. Map the process first; the fields follow.
2. The legal layer is not optional
Workday HCM speaks one language. Local payroll, labor compliance, and works council requirements speak another. In the Kazakhstan integration, the termination process alone required mapping across English and Russian, plus reconciliation with local Labor Code timing requirements. None of this lives in the standard connector — it lives in the work the implementation team chooses to do, or skip.
3. Data quality is upstream of analytics
The most polished dashboard is worthless if the data feeding it is wrong. Before any predictive model, before any executive-facing visualization, we ran a data quality program: bimonthly statistics, HRBP awareness sessions, clean ownership for each data point. Boring work. The dashboards that came after were credible work.
4. Auditors care about your sources, not your slides
Working with PwC, IFC, S&P Global, and Bloomberg taught us a simple lesson: external scrutiny tests the system, not the summary. When an auditor asks how a number was produced, the answer needs to be traceable — from raw entry, through transformation, to final report. Build the pipeline that way from day one, or rebuild it under pressure later.
5. The migration ends when the process changes
Go-live is not the end of a migration. The end is when the operating teams stop comparing the new system to the old one — when they design their next process for the new system rather than around it. That moment usually arrives six to twelve months after launch, and it depends almost entirely on how much the migration team stayed engaged after go-live.
Primeworths’ technology spine — ERP, data analytics and HR infrastructure — is offered to partners as a service. If you’re considering an ERP migration, an HRIS implementation, or a data warehouse project, we’re happy to talk.