Response companion · RFI 6HQOIG-26-A-000X
We mapped it first.
The RFI is explicit that these workflows do not sit inside the HR directorate. So we built the cross-directorate atlas before writing the response: four HR workflows, five Mission Support directorates, 46 steps scored for friction, and every one of them resolved against the Workday Core HCM business process framework.
Why this, and why now
Process engineering has a shelf life
Mapping delivers its value before configuration, not after. Once a tenant is being built, a mapping engagement quietly becomes a documentation engagement, and the redesign opportunity is spent. Everything below is organised around getting the analysis upstream of the freeze date.
Map by boundary, not by org chart
The unit of analysis is every point where work leaves one directorate and enters another. That is where cycle time, rework and lost visibility accumulate, and it is the part an HR-only mapping misses entirely.
See the methodScore the baseline, do not narrate it
Every step carries handoff count, touch time, elapsed time, rework rate and approval depth, screened against six recurring bottleneck signatures. Recommendations then rest on a measured number rather than an opinion.
Open the atlasDesign in Workday's own vocabulary
A to-be map a configuration team cannot act on is a picture, not an engineering product. Every future-state step resolves to a business process step, a delivered report or self-service action, or a named out-of-system exception.
Workday readinessWhat is in the atlas
Four workflows, five directorates
Selected because each one is owned by a different directorate on paper and executed by several in practice. The onboarding lane alone crosses four directorate boundaries before day one.
Onboarding
5 directoratesSelection through fully productive first day. The workflow with the most directorate boundaries and the least single ownership, which is why it is the standard first target.
Performance management
3 directoratesThe annual cycle, from plan issuance through rating finalization and any award action. Concentrated in HR on paper, but funded and audited elsewhere.
Offboarding
5 directoratesNotice through final pay and access termination. The shortest workflow on paper and the one with the highest control exposure, because a missed step is a live credential.
Training request to completion
4 directoratesAn employee development request from submission through funding, approval, attendance and credit. Owned by Training and Talent Development, funded by Budget and Accounting, and sometimes procured by Contracting.
Friction analytics
Six bottleneck signatures we screen for
Named, countable patterns rather than adjectives. Across the atlas, these are the counts they return.
Boundary thrash
9A single case crosses the same directorate boundary more than twice. Almost always an artifact routed before it was complete.
Serial approval chain
5Approvals executed in sequence that carry no dependency on one another. Candidates for parallel routing or outright elimination.
Re-keying
12The same data element captured by hand in more than one system. The clearest predictor of data-quality defects in a new HCM tenant.
Shadow step
18Work performed in email, spreadsheets or personal trackers with no system of record. Invisible to system-side analysis, and the most common source of surprise at cutover.
Wait-state dominance
12Elapsed time exceeds touch time by more than roughly ten to one. The process is not slow because the work is hard, it is slow because it is queued.
Exception as norm
10An exception path used in more than about one case in five. The documented process has quietly stopped being the real process.
For the contracting officer
Everything the RFI asked for, in one place
The five-page response answers Questions 1 through 9 within the format constraints. This portal carries the working evidence behind it, with a crosswalk from each question to where it is answered.