09 Oct So you want to implement Dayforce. Are you sure?
Your quest for an HR platform probably felt like a mythological crown quest. Everyone tries buuuuuuuuuuut only one can be queen.
And here you are by some twitchy twist of whatever mad algorithm is in play today because you’ve decided to pledge fealty to Dayforce.
It is now excalibur to your Arthur. The rose to your thorn. The beauty to your beast. The arrow to your achilles. The bees to your knees. The wiper to your window. The lotioned tissue to your chaffing nose. Dayforce … the chosen elixir for your HR and payroll ailments.
But questions are starting when they should have been ending, and flea-sized stress feelings are irritating your sensitive achievement-starved skin.
Did I chose correctly for the long-term? Did I consider all business perspectives? Did I make a personal preference decision based on the sales talk? Did I push for this as part of my career ambitions? Did I paint the horizon or was I sold the painting? Was I “sold”?
And the questions are probably flying in from elsewhere too. People who were included and excluded from the selection process are jawing for attention. What are we doing now? Who’s doing the work? When do we need to start? What do we need to know? Do you know anything?
Ahhhh…will no one, including yourself, just let you sip your celebratory drink in peace?
Play the game, win silly prizes. Like now being the central figure in your own doubt demise before the Dayforce crown meant to bring peace has even settled into place.
But, you have been led here and we can help alleviate some (maybe even all!) of the tension creeping in with three tips you can deploy to bring some sureness back into your mind and body.
Tip 1: Be the contract concierge
When you started this whole process, did you read the proposal documents and feel a little breathless at the promises and possibilities Did you ingest the sales demoes like your first coffee in the morning, its potency straightening your spine in two sips?
Great, then spend the same energy and effort reading and analyzing your contract like a baby will die if you don’t. Read it every morning and every afternoon until you know with 100% certainty what you asked for AND what you expect to be delivered are on the written page.
We can hear you thinking loudly over there: “of course I read the contract.” Hmm hmmmmm. People tend to read what they want, filling in gaps and spaces to make a narrative whole, even if what they’re reading is concisely written. Just because the Dayforce talking heads wowed you with dashboards doesn’t mean you are getting the dashboards you were shown. But your brain may trick you into thinking you are because dashboards is a well-written section in the contract.
Generalities can turn to specificity and vice versa in the blink of a bleary eye and on the last nerve. Hold tightest to what you signed, for better or for worse, as your first defense line.
Tip 2: Be the requirements whisperer
We often see RFPs go out with requirements collated in two ways:
A listing likely pulled from AI or browser searches or from someone else that sound correct but are bereft of context and circumstance.
A listing attempting detail but so untraceable people don’t know what they’re evaluating and rely on interpretations of verbal and visual cues to fill the gaps for their personal needs and wants.
(The third option is no RFP at all and a purchase completed based on vibes and ego which is a scenario for a different post.)
The former approach lets the sales pitch do the talking for you to you. The latter lets individual pockets of misinterpretation and assumptions grow until the seeds of discontentment take root. Both scenarios require multiple requirement revisits— starting now—to articulate and clarify what is needed and what is changing within your business. Add in the new and changed requirements rooted in your contract (see tip 1) and you now have a partially obscured landscape in front of you to navigate, one requirement at a time as “out of scope” and “for an additional cost” become frequent flier comments.
How you negotiate the forging of shapeshifting requirement paths is what will determine if your implementation approach is a success by the letter of the contract requirements or by the words of the everyday user requirements.
Tip 3: Be the methodology herder
Activate is a fancy methodology embedded right in Dayforce and the pre-configuration works very well. The fast to value sales tagline runs on this methodology being succinct and smooth…for them more than you.
Seventy percent of the purchased methodology requires 100% of the implementation work to be completed by you. This work runs like a funnel. You need to synthesize and contract to fit the pre-set funnel then grow and expand to assess if the results out of the funnel work.
Contracting is easy at the start; it’s the data work and configuration workbooks. These discussions can move so quickly that it feels like, yes, it IS fast to value! Then the expansion starts and fast becomes perilous and perilous becomes a realism battle optimism may not be strong enough to win.
Why? The methodology cannot cover what comprehension of your own business does not. It cannot fill business capability gaps or make fluid what it is inert in your decision-making.
Methodology runs on pre-formulated steps with little to no know-how. People run on steps that are tricky and sticky. Small ‘a’ agility understands the connection between the two is fraught with static and noise during an implementation. In action, agility means protecting what is working and moving away from what isn’t with decisive actions and a next try.
Whether you’ve chosen the correct technology for the visioned long-term is a gamble every business takes. The risk lessens when you accept mistakes can and have been made already and will continue to happen.
We know from experience that if you can figure out how best to enable these three tips within your own context, your head will feel lighter wearing the Dayforce crown. And, also remember, you don’t need to be charged with being the concierge, whisperer, and the herder; find the helpers to share the burden and blessing.