Construction Firm
Construction Firm
Construction Firm
Construction Firm
How a Federal Contractor Slashed their Workday Support Spend
How a Federal Contractor Slashed their Workday Support Spend
What we did
Reduction in AMS tickets
Reclaimed per week
Minutes saved per research task
Construction Firm
This U.S.-based architecture and engineering firm delivers complex infrastructure, transportation, and building projects across the public and private sectors. With over 3,200 employees and more than 60 offices nationwide, operational efficiency is essential to managing scale, compliance, and project delivery. The firm runs its core people and finance operations on Workday.
Industry
Architecture & Engineering
head count
3,200+
team size
2
At a glance
The Challenge
The senior HR systems leader at this multi-entity federal contractor had just come back from a GenAI-for-HR conference with a clear conclusion: the industry was drowning in AI hype and starving for actual results. Every vendor had a pitch. Almost none of them had a proof point.
"Everyone's building agents. But the data's still garbage. Garbage in, garbage out."
This wasn't abstract frustration. His team supported seven legal entities across the organization with fewer than five full-time Workday admins. They had already tried — and failed — to solve the knowledge problem three times in the past two years. Three separate learning initiatives, each with executive sponsorship and real budget behind it. None broke 18% employee adoption. They had also trialed two different internal documentation hubs. Both saw usage collapse within weeks of launch.
The pattern was always the same: new tool launches, initial excitement, rapid dropoff, and a team that's back to exactly where it started — except now with less credibility to pitch the next solution. The problem was never willingness. The team wasn't refusing to learn or refusing to document. They were overwhelmed, under-resourced, and deeply averse to anything that added friction to their day.
"People don't even log into Workday. If only a quarter of your workforce engages, your data isn't real."
Meanwhile, vendors kept showing up with six- and seven-figure proposals. One skills platform came with a five-year price tag north of $1M. The pitch was polished. The ROI model was detailed. But none of it addressed the actual failure mode: behavior. You can't solve an adoption problem by deploying more software that requires adoption. The team needed something that didn't require a new tab, a new login, a new habit, or a new training session. They needed something that just worked — inside the workflow they were already in.
"That's what I like about Mando. It doesn't require a new tab or special setup. You ask your question, get your answer, and keep working."
What Changed
One admin became an early power user. In her first month, she submitted over 20 high-value queries — compensation audits, security group troubleshooting, configuration validation — that would have previously consumed full afternoons of manual research across SharePoint, Workday Community, Reddit threads, and buried email chains. She stopped bouncing between ten surfaces to find one answer. She started typing two or three words into Mando and getting the answer, often with a direct link to the exact page in the Admin Guide.
"Now she just types two or three words, and it pulls the answer. It even links to the exact page in the Admin Guide."
That single admin reported saving 5 to 10 hours per week — over 25 hours per month — on routine configuration questions alone. When the other two admins followed, the math scaled: 60+ hours per month saved across the team. That's 1.5 full work weeks of reclaimed productivity, every month, from a team of three.
"If I'm in a meeting and need something, I don't log into Workday. I just paste the question in Mando. It saves me five, six hours a week."
But the time savings were only part of the story. The real shift was in how the team resourced work. The previous year, the organization had paid $38,000 to an external consultant to deploy a single compensation module. This year, armed with Mando, the HR systems leader made a different call: train someone internally.
The Results
In under six months, the organization estimates over $50,000 in hard-dollar savings between reduced consultant spend and reclaimed admin time. The soft benefits — faster onboarding, fewer blockers, higher confidence across the team — are harder to quantify but just as real.
60+ hours saved per month across a 3-person admin team
$50,000+ in hard-dollar savings in the first six months
$30,800 saved on a single initiative by training internally instead of hiring a consultant
70% faster training for new team members ramping on Workday
Zero new logins, tabs, or tools required — adoption happened organically because Mando met the team inside their existing workflow
Six months in, the team doesn't think of Mando as AI. They think of it as infrastructure. It sits alongside Teams, Outlook, and Workday as part of the daily operating stack. Not a tool they evaluate. One they depend on.
"It filters the first level of doubt. You can move without second-guessing yourself. That's what saves you time — not just answers, but certainty."
At a glance
The Challenge
The senior HR systems leader at this multi-entity federal contractor had just come back from a GenAI-for-HR conference with a clear conclusion: the industry was drowning in AI hype and starving for actual results. Every vendor had a pitch. Almost none of them had a proof point.
"Everyone's building agents. But the data's still garbage. Garbage in, garbage out."
This wasn't abstract frustration. His team supported seven legal entities across the organization with fewer than five full-time Workday admins. They had already tried — and failed — to solve the knowledge problem three times in the past two years. Three separate learning initiatives, each with executive sponsorship and real budget behind it. None broke 18% employee adoption. They had also trialed two different internal documentation hubs. Both saw usage collapse within weeks of launch.
The pattern was always the same: new tool launches, initial excitement, rapid dropoff, and a team that's back to exactly where it started — except now with less credibility to pitch the next solution. The problem was never willingness. The team wasn't refusing to learn or refusing to document. They were overwhelmed, under-resourced, and deeply averse to anything that added friction to their day.
"People don't even log into Workday. If only a quarter of your workforce engages, your data isn't real."
Meanwhile, vendors kept showing up with six- and seven-figure proposals. One skills platform came with a five-year price tag north of $1M. The pitch was polished. The ROI model was detailed. But none of it addressed the actual failure mode: behavior. You can't solve an adoption problem by deploying more software that requires adoption. The team needed something that didn't require a new tab, a new login, a new habit, or a new training session. They needed something that just worked — inside the workflow they were already in.
"That's what I like about Mando. It doesn't require a new tab or special setup. You ask your question, get your answer, and keep working."
What Changed
One admin became an early power user. In her first month, she submitted over 20 high-value queries — compensation audits, security group troubleshooting, configuration validation — that would have previously consumed full afternoons of manual research across SharePoint, Workday Community, Reddit threads, and buried email chains. She stopped bouncing between ten surfaces to find one answer. She started typing two or three words into Mando and getting the answer, often with a direct link to the exact page in the Admin Guide.
"Now she just types two or three words, and it pulls the answer. It even links to the exact page in the Admin Guide."
That single admin reported saving 5 to 10 hours per week — over 25 hours per month — on routine configuration questions alone. When the other two admins followed, the math scaled: 60+ hours per month saved across the team. That's 1.5 full work weeks of reclaimed productivity, every month, from a team of three.
"If I'm in a meeting and need something, I don't log into Workday. I just paste the question in Mando. It saves me five, six hours a week."
But the time savings were only part of the story. The real shift was in how the team resourced work. The previous year, the organization had paid $38,000 to an external consultant to deploy a single compensation module. This year, armed with Mando, the HR systems leader made a different call: train someone internally.
The Results
In under six months, the organization estimates over $50,000 in hard-dollar savings between reduced consultant spend and reclaimed admin time. The soft benefits — faster onboarding, fewer blockers, higher confidence across the team — are harder to quantify but just as real.
60+ hours saved per month across a 3-person admin team
$50,000+ in hard-dollar savings in the first six months
$30,800 saved on a single initiative by training internally instead of hiring a consultant
70% faster training for new team members ramping on Workday
Zero new logins, tabs, or tools required — adoption happened organically because Mando met the team inside their existing workflow
Six months in, the team doesn't think of Mando as AI. They think of it as infrastructure. It sits alongside Teams, Outlook, and Workday as part of the daily operating stack. Not a tool they evaluate. One they depend on.
"It filters the first level of doubt. You can move without second-guessing yourself. That's what saves you time — not just answers, but certainty."
At a glance
The Challenge
The senior HR systems leader at this multi-entity federal contractor had just come back from a GenAI-for-HR conference with a clear conclusion: the industry was drowning in AI hype and starving for actual results. Every vendor had a pitch. Almost none of them had a proof point.
"Everyone's building agents. But the data's still garbage. Garbage in, garbage out."
This wasn't abstract frustration. His team supported seven legal entities across the organization with fewer than five full-time Workday admins. They had already tried — and failed — to solve the knowledge problem three times in the past two years. Three separate learning initiatives, each with executive sponsorship and real budget behind it. None broke 18% employee adoption. They had also trialed two different internal documentation hubs. Both saw usage collapse within weeks of launch.
The pattern was always the same: new tool launches, initial excitement, rapid dropoff, and a team that's back to exactly where it started — except now with less credibility to pitch the next solution. The problem was never willingness. The team wasn't refusing to learn or refusing to document. They were overwhelmed, under-resourced, and deeply averse to anything that added friction to their day.
"People don't even log into Workday. If only a quarter of your workforce engages, your data isn't real."
Meanwhile, vendors kept showing up with six- and seven-figure proposals. One skills platform came with a five-year price tag north of $1M. The pitch was polished. The ROI model was detailed. But none of it addressed the actual failure mode: behavior. You can't solve an adoption problem by deploying more software that requires adoption. The team needed something that didn't require a new tab, a new login, a new habit, or a new training session. They needed something that just worked — inside the workflow they were already in.
"That's what I like about Mando. It doesn't require a new tab or special setup. You ask your question, get your answer, and keep working."
What Changed
One admin became an early power user. In her first month, she submitted over 20 high-value queries — compensation audits, security group troubleshooting, configuration validation — that would have previously consumed full afternoons of manual research across SharePoint, Workday Community, Reddit threads, and buried email chains. She stopped bouncing between ten surfaces to find one answer. She started typing two or three words into Mando and getting the answer, often with a direct link to the exact page in the Admin Guide.
"Now she just types two or three words, and it pulls the answer. It even links to the exact page in the Admin Guide."
That single admin reported saving 5 to 10 hours per week — over 25 hours per month — on routine configuration questions alone. When the other two admins followed, the math scaled: 60+ hours per month saved across the team. That's 1.5 full work weeks of reclaimed productivity, every month, from a team of three.
"If I'm in a meeting and need something, I don't log into Workday. I just paste the question in Mando. It saves me five, six hours a week."
But the time savings were only part of the story. The real shift was in how the team resourced work. The previous year, the organization had paid $38,000 to an external consultant to deploy a single compensation module. This year, armed with Mando, the HR systems leader made a different call: train someone internally.
The Results
In under six months, the organization estimates over $50,000 in hard-dollar savings between reduced consultant spend and reclaimed admin time. The soft benefits — faster onboarding, fewer blockers, higher confidence across the team — are harder to quantify but just as real.
60+ hours saved per month across a 3-person admin team
$50,000+ in hard-dollar savings in the first six months
$30,800 saved on a single initiative by training internally instead of hiring a consultant
70% faster training for new team members ramping on Workday
Zero new logins, tabs, or tools required — adoption happened organically because Mando met the team inside their existing workflow
Six months in, the team doesn't think of Mando as AI. They think of it as infrastructure. It sits alongside Teams, Outlook, and Workday as part of the daily operating stack. Not a tool they evaluate. One they depend on.
"It filters the first level of doubt. You can move without second-guessing yourself. That's what saves you time — not just answers, but certainty."
Use case
01
Why Three Failed Initiatives Made Mando the One That Stuck
Most enterprise software stories start with a problem and end with a solution. This one starts with three failed solutions and ends with the realization that the problem was never what anyone thought it was.
Before Mando
Over the past two years, the HR systems team had launched three separate learning initiatives designed to improve how employees and admins interacted with Workday. Each one had executive sponsorship. Each one had budget. Each one followed the playbook: identify the gap, select a tool, roll it out with training, measure adoption.
None of them broke 18% adoption. Not one.
They also trialed two internal documentation hubs — centralized repositories where the team could store and share Workday knowledge. Both saw the same trajectory: a burst of activity at launch, a steady decline over the following weeks, and eventually, abandonment. The documentation existed. Nobody used it.
By the time the senior HR systems leader came back from the GenAI-for-HR conference, he'd internalized a pattern that most enterprise teams take years to recognize: the problem wasn't the tool. It wasn't the content. It wasn't the training. It was the ask. Every solution demanded that people change their behavior — open a new tab, log into a new system, learn a new interface, build a new habit. And every time, the answer was the same: they didn't.
The Context
This is the adoption trap that kills most enterprise knowledge initiatives. The tools work in demos. They work in pilots with motivated early adopters. They work when someone from the project team is standing over your shoulder showing you where to click. But the moment the rollout ends and people go back to their real work — the work that's urgent, that has deadlines, that doesn't leave room for learning a new interface — usage collapses.
It's not that people are resistant to change. It's that the change isn't worth the cost. If finding an answer in the new system takes three minutes but finding it the old way takes five, most people will stick with the old way — because the old way doesn't require them to remember a new URL, a new login, and a new set of navigation patterns. The switching cost is cognitive, not temporal. And cognitive costs are the ones that kill adoption.
The vendors pitching this team didn't understand that. One proposed a skills platform with a five-year contract exceeding $1M. The ROI model assumed adoption rates that the team already knew were fantasy. Another vendor pitched an AI agent framework that required clean data as a prerequisite — which was exactly the thing the team couldn't achieve because employees weren't engaging with the system in the first place.
"People don't even log into Workday. If only a quarter of your workforce engages, your data isn't real."
The Solution
Mando didn't ask anyone to change their behavior. That was the entire point. No new tab. No new login. No new interface to learn. No training session to attend. The Chrome extension sat inside the browser the team was already using. When a question came up — in a meeting, in the middle of a configuration session, during a Slack conversation — the admin typed a few words and got an answer. No context switch. No workflow disruption.
This sounds like a small design choice. It's not. It's the reason Mando succeeded where three previous initiatives failed. Every one of those initiatives required adoption. Mando required nothing. It met the team inside the workflow they were already in, answered the question they already had, and got out of the way.
The adoption curve was the opposite of everything the team had seen before. Instead of a launch spike followed by a decline, usage grew steadily. One admin started using it. Then two. Then all three. No mandate. No change management initiative. No executive email urging people to "please use the new tool." Just organic adoption driven by the fact that it was faster and easier than everything else.
"That's what I like about Mando. It doesn't require a new tab or special setup. You ask your question, get your answer, and keep working."
The Result
For the first time in two years, the team had a knowledge tool with 100% adoption across the admin group. Not because it was mandated. Because it worked. The three previous initiatives taught the organization an expensive lesson: you can't solve a behavior problem with better software. You solve it by removing the behavior change entirely. Mando did that. And in doing so, it became the first tool in two years that the team actually trusts.
Use case
01
Why Three Failed Initiatives Made Mando the One That Stuck
Most enterprise software stories start with a problem and end with a solution. This one starts with three failed solutions and ends with the realization that the problem was never what anyone thought it was.
Before Mando
Over the past two years, the HR systems team had launched three separate learning initiatives designed to improve how employees and admins interacted with Workday. Each one had executive sponsorship. Each one had budget. Each one followed the playbook: identify the gap, select a tool, roll it out with training, measure adoption.
None of them broke 18% adoption. Not one.
They also trialed two internal documentation hubs — centralized repositories where the team could store and share Workday knowledge. Both saw the same trajectory: a burst of activity at launch, a steady decline over the following weeks, and eventually, abandonment. The documentation existed. Nobody used it.
By the time the senior HR systems leader came back from the GenAI-for-HR conference, he'd internalized a pattern that most enterprise teams take years to recognize: the problem wasn't the tool. It wasn't the content. It wasn't the training. It was the ask. Every solution demanded that people change their behavior — open a new tab, log into a new system, learn a new interface, build a new habit. And every time, the answer was the same: they didn't.
The Context
This is the adoption trap that kills most enterprise knowledge initiatives. The tools work in demos. They work in pilots with motivated early adopters. They work when someone from the project team is standing over your shoulder showing you where to click. But the moment the rollout ends and people go back to their real work — the work that's urgent, that has deadlines, that doesn't leave room for learning a new interface — usage collapses.
It's not that people are resistant to change. It's that the change isn't worth the cost. If finding an answer in the new system takes three minutes but finding it the old way takes five, most people will stick with the old way — because the old way doesn't require them to remember a new URL, a new login, and a new set of navigation patterns. The switching cost is cognitive, not temporal. And cognitive costs are the ones that kill adoption.
The vendors pitching this team didn't understand that. One proposed a skills platform with a five-year contract exceeding $1M. The ROI model assumed adoption rates that the team already knew were fantasy. Another vendor pitched an AI agent framework that required clean data as a prerequisite — which was exactly the thing the team couldn't achieve because employees weren't engaging with the system in the first place.
"People don't even log into Workday. If only a quarter of your workforce engages, your data isn't real."
The Solution
Mando didn't ask anyone to change their behavior. That was the entire point. No new tab. No new login. No new interface to learn. No training session to attend. The Chrome extension sat inside the browser the team was already using. When a question came up — in a meeting, in the middle of a configuration session, during a Slack conversation — the admin typed a few words and got an answer. No context switch. No workflow disruption.
This sounds like a small design choice. It's not. It's the reason Mando succeeded where three previous initiatives failed. Every one of those initiatives required adoption. Mando required nothing. It met the team inside the workflow they were already in, answered the question they already had, and got out of the way.
The adoption curve was the opposite of everything the team had seen before. Instead of a launch spike followed by a decline, usage grew steadily. One admin started using it. Then two. Then all three. No mandate. No change management initiative. No executive email urging people to "please use the new tool." Just organic adoption driven by the fact that it was faster and easier than everything else.
"That's what I like about Mando. It doesn't require a new tab or special setup. You ask your question, get your answer, and keep working."
The Result
For the first time in two years, the team had a knowledge tool with 100% adoption across the admin group. Not because it was mandated. Because it worked. The three previous initiatives taught the organization an expensive lesson: you can't solve a behavior problem with better software. You solve it by removing the behavior change entirely. Mando did that. And in doing so, it became the first tool in two years that the team actually trusts.
Use case
01
Why Three Failed Initiatives Made Mando the One That Stuck
Most enterprise software stories start with a problem and end with a solution. This one starts with three failed solutions and ends with the realization that the problem was never what anyone thought it was.
Before Mando
Over the past two years, the HR systems team had launched three separate learning initiatives designed to improve how employees and admins interacted with Workday. Each one had executive sponsorship. Each one had budget. Each one followed the playbook: identify the gap, select a tool, roll it out with training, measure adoption.
None of them broke 18% adoption. Not one.
They also trialed two internal documentation hubs — centralized repositories where the team could store and share Workday knowledge. Both saw the same trajectory: a burst of activity at launch, a steady decline over the following weeks, and eventually, abandonment. The documentation existed. Nobody used it.
By the time the senior HR systems leader came back from the GenAI-for-HR conference, he'd internalized a pattern that most enterprise teams take years to recognize: the problem wasn't the tool. It wasn't the content. It wasn't the training. It was the ask. Every solution demanded that people change their behavior — open a new tab, log into a new system, learn a new interface, build a new habit. And every time, the answer was the same: they didn't.
The Context
This is the adoption trap that kills most enterprise knowledge initiatives. The tools work in demos. They work in pilots with motivated early adopters. They work when someone from the project team is standing over your shoulder showing you where to click. But the moment the rollout ends and people go back to their real work — the work that's urgent, that has deadlines, that doesn't leave room for learning a new interface — usage collapses.
It's not that people are resistant to change. It's that the change isn't worth the cost. If finding an answer in the new system takes three minutes but finding it the old way takes five, most people will stick with the old way — because the old way doesn't require them to remember a new URL, a new login, and a new set of navigation patterns. The switching cost is cognitive, not temporal. And cognitive costs are the ones that kill adoption.
The vendors pitching this team didn't understand that. One proposed a skills platform with a five-year contract exceeding $1M. The ROI model assumed adoption rates that the team already knew were fantasy. Another vendor pitched an AI agent framework that required clean data as a prerequisite — which was exactly the thing the team couldn't achieve because employees weren't engaging with the system in the first place.
"People don't even log into Workday. If only a quarter of your workforce engages, your data isn't real."
The Solution
Mando didn't ask anyone to change their behavior. That was the entire point. No new tab. No new login. No new interface to learn. No training session to attend. The Chrome extension sat inside the browser the team was already using. When a question came up — in a meeting, in the middle of a configuration session, during a Slack conversation — the admin typed a few words and got an answer. No context switch. No workflow disruption.
This sounds like a small design choice. It's not. It's the reason Mando succeeded where three previous initiatives failed. Every one of those initiatives required adoption. Mando required nothing. It met the team inside the workflow they were already in, answered the question they already had, and got out of the way.
The adoption curve was the opposite of everything the team had seen before. Instead of a launch spike followed by a decline, usage grew steadily. One admin started using it. Then two. Then all three. No mandate. No change management initiative. No executive email urging people to "please use the new tool." Just organic adoption driven by the fact that it was faster and easier than everything else.
"That's what I like about Mando. It doesn't require a new tab or special setup. You ask your question, get your answer, and keep working."
The Result
For the first time in two years, the team had a knowledge tool with 100% adoption across the admin group. Not because it was mandated. Because it worked. The three previous initiatives taught the organization an expensive lesson: you can't solve a behavior problem with better software. You solve it by removing the behavior change entirely. Mando did that. And in doing so, it became the first tool in two years that the team actually trusts.
Use case
02
From $38,000 Consultants to $7,200 Internal Training
Enterprise Workday teams have a dependency problem, and most of them know it. When a new module needs to be deployed — compensation, benefits, payroll, talent — the default move is to hire an external consultant. Not because the internal team can't learn it. Because the internal team doesn't have time to learn it while also running everything else. So you pay $150–$300 an hour for someone external to do what your own people could do, if only they had access to the right knowledge at the right speed.
Before Mando
The previous year, this organization paid $38,000 for an external consultant to deploy a single compensation module in Workday. That's not unusual — it's actually on the lower end for comp deployments at organizations of this size and complexity. Seven legal entities, 3,200 employees, 60+ offices, federal compliance requirements. The scope justified the spend. Or at least, it seemed to.
But the HR systems leader saw the invoice differently. $38,000 wasn't the cost of complexity. It was the cost of dependency. His team had the functional knowledge to configure compensation. What they didn't have was fast, reliable access to the implementation guidance that would let them do it confidently without an external safety net. Every time they hit an unfamiliar configuration screen or a question about how two settings interacted, the options were: spend an afternoon digging through Workday Community, or call the consultant. The consultant was faster. So the consultant stayed on the project. And the invoice kept growing.
This pattern repeated across the organization. Not just for compensation — for any module deployment, any significant configuration change, any initiative where the team's knowledge had gaps. The cost wasn't the consultant's hourly rate. It was the compounding effect of a team that couldn't self-serve fast enough to avoid external dependency.
The Context
Consultant dependency in enterprise Workday shops follows a predictable cycle. The internal team handles day-to-day administration. A new initiative comes in — a module deployment, a compliance change, a system upgrade. The team doesn't have deep expertise in that specific area. So a consultant is brought in. The consultant does the work, delivers the configuration, and leaves. The knowledge leaves with them.
Six months later, something in that module breaks. Or an audit question surfaces. Or a change request comes in. The internal team can't confidently touch the configuration because they didn't build it and don't fully understand the rationale behind it. So the consultant comes back. Another invoice. Another knowledge extraction that walks out the door when the engagement ends.
Over time, this creates a structural dependency that's expensive and fragile. The organization doesn't build internal capability — it rents external capability, repeatedly, at premium rates. And the internal team never levels up because they never get the chance to learn by doing. The consultant model, intended as a bridge, becomes a permanent fixture.
The Solution
This year, the HR systems leader made a different call. Instead of hiring an external consultant to deploy compensation again, he assigned it to an internal team member — and gave that person Mando.
The approach was simple. The internal admin would own the configuration. When they hit a question — how does this calculated field interact with that earning code? what's the correct security configuration for this business process? how have other organizations handled this specific scenario? — they'd check Mando first. If Mando had the answer, they moved forward. If it didn't, they escalated. But escalation became the exception, not the starting point.
The admin ramped faster than anyone expected. Mando didn't just answer individual questions — it provided the connective tissue between concepts. Instead of isolated answers to isolated questions, the admin built a working mental model of the compensation module by asking dozens of questions in sequence, each one building on the last. The learning was self-directed, self-paced, and grounded in real configuration work — not a training class disconnected from the actual system.
"We paid $38,000 last year for a consultant to deploy compensation. This year, I'm training my guy internally for $7,200. That's the model. Train the team. Make the tools easy. Let them run."
The Result
$30,800 saved on a single initiative. But the number understates the shift. This wasn't a one-time cost avoidance — it was a proof point for a completely different operating model. Instead of renting expertise for every new initiative, the organization can now build it internally. Instead of paying a consultant $38,000 to do the work and leave, they invested $7,200 to train someone who stays, who accumulates knowledge, and who can handle the next initiative too.
Multiply that model across every module deployment, every configuration change, and every compliance update over the next three years, and the math isn't incremental. It's structural. The organization is building internal capability instead of renting external capability. And Mando is the tool that makes the build-versus-buy math work for the first time.
Use case
02
From $38,000 Consultants to $7,200 Internal Training
Enterprise Workday teams have a dependency problem, and most of them know it. When a new module needs to be deployed — compensation, benefits, payroll, talent — the default move is to hire an external consultant. Not because the internal team can't learn it. Because the internal team doesn't have time to learn it while also running everything else. So you pay $150–$300 an hour for someone external to do what your own people could do, if only they had access to the right knowledge at the right speed.
Before Mando
The previous year, this organization paid $38,000 for an external consultant to deploy a single compensation module in Workday. That's not unusual — it's actually on the lower end for comp deployments at organizations of this size and complexity. Seven legal entities, 3,200 employees, 60+ offices, federal compliance requirements. The scope justified the spend. Or at least, it seemed to.
But the HR systems leader saw the invoice differently. $38,000 wasn't the cost of complexity. It was the cost of dependency. His team had the functional knowledge to configure compensation. What they didn't have was fast, reliable access to the implementation guidance that would let them do it confidently without an external safety net. Every time they hit an unfamiliar configuration screen or a question about how two settings interacted, the options were: spend an afternoon digging through Workday Community, or call the consultant. The consultant was faster. So the consultant stayed on the project. And the invoice kept growing.
This pattern repeated across the organization. Not just for compensation — for any module deployment, any significant configuration change, any initiative where the team's knowledge had gaps. The cost wasn't the consultant's hourly rate. It was the compounding effect of a team that couldn't self-serve fast enough to avoid external dependency.
The Context
Consultant dependency in enterprise Workday shops follows a predictable cycle. The internal team handles day-to-day administration. A new initiative comes in — a module deployment, a compliance change, a system upgrade. The team doesn't have deep expertise in that specific area. So a consultant is brought in. The consultant does the work, delivers the configuration, and leaves. The knowledge leaves with them.
Six months later, something in that module breaks. Or an audit question surfaces. Or a change request comes in. The internal team can't confidently touch the configuration because they didn't build it and don't fully understand the rationale behind it. So the consultant comes back. Another invoice. Another knowledge extraction that walks out the door when the engagement ends.
Over time, this creates a structural dependency that's expensive and fragile. The organization doesn't build internal capability — it rents external capability, repeatedly, at premium rates. And the internal team never levels up because they never get the chance to learn by doing. The consultant model, intended as a bridge, becomes a permanent fixture.
The Solution
This year, the HR systems leader made a different call. Instead of hiring an external consultant to deploy compensation again, he assigned it to an internal team member — and gave that person Mando.
The approach was simple. The internal admin would own the configuration. When they hit a question — how does this calculated field interact with that earning code? what's the correct security configuration for this business process? how have other organizations handled this specific scenario? — they'd check Mando first. If Mando had the answer, they moved forward. If it didn't, they escalated. But escalation became the exception, not the starting point.
The admin ramped faster than anyone expected. Mando didn't just answer individual questions — it provided the connective tissue between concepts. Instead of isolated answers to isolated questions, the admin built a working mental model of the compensation module by asking dozens of questions in sequence, each one building on the last. The learning was self-directed, self-paced, and grounded in real configuration work — not a training class disconnected from the actual system.
"We paid $38,000 last year for a consultant to deploy compensation. This year, I'm training my guy internally for $7,200. That's the model. Train the team. Make the tools easy. Let them run."
The Result
$30,800 saved on a single initiative. But the number understates the shift. This wasn't a one-time cost avoidance — it was a proof point for a completely different operating model. Instead of renting expertise for every new initiative, the organization can now build it internally. Instead of paying a consultant $38,000 to do the work and leave, they invested $7,200 to train someone who stays, who accumulates knowledge, and who can handle the next initiative too.
Multiply that model across every module deployment, every configuration change, and every compliance update over the next three years, and the math isn't incremental. It's structural. The organization is building internal capability instead of renting external capability. And Mando is the tool that makes the build-versus-buy math work for the first time.
Use case
02
From $38,000 Consultants to $7,200 Internal Training
Enterprise Workday teams have a dependency problem, and most of them know it. When a new module needs to be deployed — compensation, benefits, payroll, talent — the default move is to hire an external consultant. Not because the internal team can't learn it. Because the internal team doesn't have time to learn it while also running everything else. So you pay $150–$300 an hour for someone external to do what your own people could do, if only they had access to the right knowledge at the right speed.
Before Mando
The previous year, this organization paid $38,000 for an external consultant to deploy a single compensation module in Workday. That's not unusual — it's actually on the lower end for comp deployments at organizations of this size and complexity. Seven legal entities, 3,200 employees, 60+ offices, federal compliance requirements. The scope justified the spend. Or at least, it seemed to.
But the HR systems leader saw the invoice differently. $38,000 wasn't the cost of complexity. It was the cost of dependency. His team had the functional knowledge to configure compensation. What they didn't have was fast, reliable access to the implementation guidance that would let them do it confidently without an external safety net. Every time they hit an unfamiliar configuration screen or a question about how two settings interacted, the options were: spend an afternoon digging through Workday Community, or call the consultant. The consultant was faster. So the consultant stayed on the project. And the invoice kept growing.
This pattern repeated across the organization. Not just for compensation — for any module deployment, any significant configuration change, any initiative where the team's knowledge had gaps. The cost wasn't the consultant's hourly rate. It was the compounding effect of a team that couldn't self-serve fast enough to avoid external dependency.
The Context
Consultant dependency in enterprise Workday shops follows a predictable cycle. The internal team handles day-to-day administration. A new initiative comes in — a module deployment, a compliance change, a system upgrade. The team doesn't have deep expertise in that specific area. So a consultant is brought in. The consultant does the work, delivers the configuration, and leaves. The knowledge leaves with them.
Six months later, something in that module breaks. Or an audit question surfaces. Or a change request comes in. The internal team can't confidently touch the configuration because they didn't build it and don't fully understand the rationale behind it. So the consultant comes back. Another invoice. Another knowledge extraction that walks out the door when the engagement ends.
Over time, this creates a structural dependency that's expensive and fragile. The organization doesn't build internal capability — it rents external capability, repeatedly, at premium rates. And the internal team never levels up because they never get the chance to learn by doing. The consultant model, intended as a bridge, becomes a permanent fixture.
The Solution
This year, the HR systems leader made a different call. Instead of hiring an external consultant to deploy compensation again, he assigned it to an internal team member — and gave that person Mando.
The approach was simple. The internal admin would own the configuration. When they hit a question — how does this calculated field interact with that earning code? what's the correct security configuration for this business process? how have other organizations handled this specific scenario? — they'd check Mando first. If Mando had the answer, they moved forward. If it didn't, they escalated. But escalation became the exception, not the starting point.
The admin ramped faster than anyone expected. Mando didn't just answer individual questions — it provided the connective tissue between concepts. Instead of isolated answers to isolated questions, the admin built a working mental model of the compensation module by asking dozens of questions in sequence, each one building on the last. The learning was self-directed, self-paced, and grounded in real configuration work — not a training class disconnected from the actual system.
"We paid $38,000 last year for a consultant to deploy compensation. This year, I'm training my guy internally for $7,200. That's the model. Train the team. Make the tools easy. Let them run."
The Result
$30,800 saved on a single initiative. But the number understates the shift. This wasn't a one-time cost avoidance — it was a proof point for a completely different operating model. Instead of renting expertise for every new initiative, the organization can now build it internally. Instead of paying a consultant $38,000 to do the work and leave, they invested $7,200 to train someone who stays, who accumulates knowledge, and who can handle the next initiative too.
Multiply that model across every module deployment, every configuration change, and every compliance update over the next three years, and the math isn't incremental. It's structural. The organization is building internal capability instead of renting external capability. And Mando is the tool that makes the build-versus-buy math work for the first time.
Use case
03
60 Hours a Month Back from the Search Tax
Every Workday admin pays a hidden tax on every question. Not the time it takes to answer the question — the time it takes to find the answer. The actual configuration work, the testing, the validation — that's the job. But before any of that can start, there's a search phase that eats hours. And for lean teams supporting complex environments, that search phase is where the day disappears.
Before Mando
This team's power user — one of fewer than five admins supporting seven legal entities on Workday — had a routine that every enterprise admin would recognize. A question surfaces. She opens Workday Community. The search results are a mix of threads from 2019, answers referencing features that have been renamed twice, and links to documentation that's been reorganized since the post was written. She refines the search. Tries different keywords. Opens a dozen tabs.
If Community doesn't yield a clean answer in fifteen minutes, she pivots. SharePoint folders next — the ones from the last implementation, organized by someone who's no longer at the company. Then the internal wiki, which hasn't been updated since the last fiscal year. Then Slack, searching for a thread where someone mentioned this exact issue four months ago. Then, if all else fails, Reddit — where anonymous strangers sometimes have better answers than the official documentation.
PDFs buried in inboxes. Half-answers in chat threads. Configuration guides that are technically correct but organized around a different version of the question than the one she's actually asking. The team had become experts in searching. The problem was that searching isn't solving. And the hours spent searching were hours not spent on the actual work.
Full afternoons disappeared this way. Routinely. Not on hard problems — on findability problems. The answer existed somewhere. It always did. Finding it was the tax.
The Context
The math on search time is deceptive. Thirty minutes here, an hour there — it doesn't feel like a crisis. But compound it across a team and across months, and the numbers are staggering. Each of the three admins using Mando was losing anywhere from 5 to 10 hours per week to research. That's 15 to 30 hours per week across the team. 60 to 120 hours per month. The equivalent of one to two full-time employees doing nothing but searching for information that already exists.
For a lean team — one that's deliberately staffed small, supporting a complex multi-entity federal contractor — those hours aren't slack in the system. There is no slack. Every hour lost to search is an hour stolen from configuration work, from compliance tasks, from the strategic improvements that leadership keeps asking about and the team keeps deferring because there's never enough time.
And the cognitive cost compounds on top of the time cost. Context-switching between six different information surfaces isn't just slow — it's mentally draining. By the time an admin pieces together an answer from Community threads, SharePoint docs, and a half-remembered Slack conversation, they've burned through the mental energy they needed for the actual problem. The search doesn't just take time. It takes capacity.
The Solution
Mando collapsed the search phase from hours to minutes. Instead of six surfaces — Community, SharePoint, wiki, Slack, email, Reddit — the team now starts in one place. Types a few words. Gets an answer grounded in Workday admin guides, validated implementation patterns, and real customer examples. Often with a direct link to the exact page in the documentation.
The first power user submitted over 20 high-value queries in her first month — compensation audits, security group troubleshooting, configuration validation, business process questions. Each one represented a research session that would have previously consumed 30 minutes to two hours. With Mando, most resolved in under five minutes.
"Now she just types two or three words, and it pulls the answer. It even links to the exact page in the Admin Guide."
And when Mando didn't have a complete answer, the fallback was still better than baseline. A near-correct starting point. A pointer to the right section of documentation. Guidance on where to look. Even the partial answers shortened research time by hours, because they eliminated the worst part of the search: not knowing where to start.
"It filters the first level of doubt. Even if it doesn't have everything, it saves us a full day of work."
"If I'm in a meeting and need something, I don't log into Workday. I just paste the question in Mando. It saves me five, six hours a week."
The Result
That single power user reported saving 5 to 10 hours per week — over 25 hours per month. When the other two admins adopted Mando (organically, without a mandate), the savings scaled to 60+ hours per month across the team. That's 1.5 full work weeks of reclaimed productivity every month, returned to a team that had zero slack to spare.
The hours didn't go to waste. They went to the work that had been deferred for months — configuration improvements, compliance documentation, the strategic projects that leadership had been waiting on. The search tax didn't just shrink. For most routine questions, it disappeared entirely. And the team that used to be experts in searching became experts in solving again.
Use case
03
60 Hours a Month Back from the Search Tax
Every Workday admin pays a hidden tax on every question. Not the time it takes to answer the question — the time it takes to find the answer. The actual configuration work, the testing, the validation — that's the job. But before any of that can start, there's a search phase that eats hours. And for lean teams supporting complex environments, that search phase is where the day disappears.
Before Mando
This team's power user — one of fewer than five admins supporting seven legal entities on Workday — had a routine that every enterprise admin would recognize. A question surfaces. She opens Workday Community. The search results are a mix of threads from 2019, answers referencing features that have been renamed twice, and links to documentation that's been reorganized since the post was written. She refines the search. Tries different keywords. Opens a dozen tabs.
If Community doesn't yield a clean answer in fifteen minutes, she pivots. SharePoint folders next — the ones from the last implementation, organized by someone who's no longer at the company. Then the internal wiki, which hasn't been updated since the last fiscal year. Then Slack, searching for a thread where someone mentioned this exact issue four months ago. Then, if all else fails, Reddit — where anonymous strangers sometimes have better answers than the official documentation.
PDFs buried in inboxes. Half-answers in chat threads. Configuration guides that are technically correct but organized around a different version of the question than the one she's actually asking. The team had become experts in searching. The problem was that searching isn't solving. And the hours spent searching were hours not spent on the actual work.
Full afternoons disappeared this way. Routinely. Not on hard problems — on findability problems. The answer existed somewhere. It always did. Finding it was the tax.
The Context
The math on search time is deceptive. Thirty minutes here, an hour there — it doesn't feel like a crisis. But compound it across a team and across months, and the numbers are staggering. Each of the three admins using Mando was losing anywhere from 5 to 10 hours per week to research. That's 15 to 30 hours per week across the team. 60 to 120 hours per month. The equivalent of one to two full-time employees doing nothing but searching for information that already exists.
For a lean team — one that's deliberately staffed small, supporting a complex multi-entity federal contractor — those hours aren't slack in the system. There is no slack. Every hour lost to search is an hour stolen from configuration work, from compliance tasks, from the strategic improvements that leadership keeps asking about and the team keeps deferring because there's never enough time.
And the cognitive cost compounds on top of the time cost. Context-switching between six different information surfaces isn't just slow — it's mentally draining. By the time an admin pieces together an answer from Community threads, SharePoint docs, and a half-remembered Slack conversation, they've burned through the mental energy they needed for the actual problem. The search doesn't just take time. It takes capacity.
The Solution
Mando collapsed the search phase from hours to minutes. Instead of six surfaces — Community, SharePoint, wiki, Slack, email, Reddit — the team now starts in one place. Types a few words. Gets an answer grounded in Workday admin guides, validated implementation patterns, and real customer examples. Often with a direct link to the exact page in the documentation.
The first power user submitted over 20 high-value queries in her first month — compensation audits, security group troubleshooting, configuration validation, business process questions. Each one represented a research session that would have previously consumed 30 minutes to two hours. With Mando, most resolved in under five minutes.
"Now she just types two or three words, and it pulls the answer. It even links to the exact page in the Admin Guide."
And when Mando didn't have a complete answer, the fallback was still better than baseline. A near-correct starting point. A pointer to the right section of documentation. Guidance on where to look. Even the partial answers shortened research time by hours, because they eliminated the worst part of the search: not knowing where to start.
"It filters the first level of doubt. Even if it doesn't have everything, it saves us a full day of work."
"If I'm in a meeting and need something, I don't log into Workday. I just paste the question in Mando. It saves me five, six hours a week."
The Result
That single power user reported saving 5 to 10 hours per week — over 25 hours per month. When the other two admins adopted Mando (organically, without a mandate), the savings scaled to 60+ hours per month across the team. That's 1.5 full work weeks of reclaimed productivity every month, returned to a team that had zero slack to spare.
The hours didn't go to waste. They went to the work that had been deferred for months — configuration improvements, compliance documentation, the strategic projects that leadership had been waiting on. The search tax didn't just shrink. For most routine questions, it disappeared entirely. And the team that used to be experts in searching became experts in solving again.
Use case
03
60 Hours a Month Back from the Search Tax
Every Workday admin pays a hidden tax on every question. Not the time it takes to answer the question — the time it takes to find the answer. The actual configuration work, the testing, the validation — that's the job. But before any of that can start, there's a search phase that eats hours. And for lean teams supporting complex environments, that search phase is where the day disappears.
Before Mando
This team's power user — one of fewer than five admins supporting seven legal entities on Workday — had a routine that every enterprise admin would recognize. A question surfaces. She opens Workday Community. The search results are a mix of threads from 2019, answers referencing features that have been renamed twice, and links to documentation that's been reorganized since the post was written. She refines the search. Tries different keywords. Opens a dozen tabs.
If Community doesn't yield a clean answer in fifteen minutes, she pivots. SharePoint folders next — the ones from the last implementation, organized by someone who's no longer at the company. Then the internal wiki, which hasn't been updated since the last fiscal year. Then Slack, searching for a thread where someone mentioned this exact issue four months ago. Then, if all else fails, Reddit — where anonymous strangers sometimes have better answers than the official documentation.
PDFs buried in inboxes. Half-answers in chat threads. Configuration guides that are technically correct but organized around a different version of the question than the one she's actually asking. The team had become experts in searching. The problem was that searching isn't solving. And the hours spent searching were hours not spent on the actual work.
Full afternoons disappeared this way. Routinely. Not on hard problems — on findability problems. The answer existed somewhere. It always did. Finding it was the tax.
The Context
The math on search time is deceptive. Thirty minutes here, an hour there — it doesn't feel like a crisis. But compound it across a team and across months, and the numbers are staggering. Each of the three admins using Mando was losing anywhere from 5 to 10 hours per week to research. That's 15 to 30 hours per week across the team. 60 to 120 hours per month. The equivalent of one to two full-time employees doing nothing but searching for information that already exists.
For a lean team — one that's deliberately staffed small, supporting a complex multi-entity federal contractor — those hours aren't slack in the system. There is no slack. Every hour lost to search is an hour stolen from configuration work, from compliance tasks, from the strategic improvements that leadership keeps asking about and the team keeps deferring because there's never enough time.
And the cognitive cost compounds on top of the time cost. Context-switching between six different information surfaces isn't just slow — it's mentally draining. By the time an admin pieces together an answer from Community threads, SharePoint docs, and a half-remembered Slack conversation, they've burned through the mental energy they needed for the actual problem. The search doesn't just take time. It takes capacity.
The Solution
Mando collapsed the search phase from hours to minutes. Instead of six surfaces — Community, SharePoint, wiki, Slack, email, Reddit — the team now starts in one place. Types a few words. Gets an answer grounded in Workday admin guides, validated implementation patterns, and real customer examples. Often with a direct link to the exact page in the documentation.
The first power user submitted over 20 high-value queries in her first month — compensation audits, security group troubleshooting, configuration validation, business process questions. Each one represented a research session that would have previously consumed 30 minutes to two hours. With Mando, most resolved in under five minutes.
"Now she just types two or three words, and it pulls the answer. It even links to the exact page in the Admin Guide."
And when Mando didn't have a complete answer, the fallback was still better than baseline. A near-correct starting point. A pointer to the right section of documentation. Guidance on where to look. Even the partial answers shortened research time by hours, because they eliminated the worst part of the search: not knowing where to start.
"It filters the first level of doubt. Even if it doesn't have everything, it saves us a full day of work."
"If I'm in a meeting and need something, I don't log into Workday. I just paste the question in Mando. It saves me five, six hours a week."
The Result
That single power user reported saving 5 to 10 hours per week — over 25 hours per month. When the other two admins adopted Mando (organically, without a mandate), the savings scaled to 60+ hours per month across the team. That's 1.5 full work weeks of reclaimed productivity every month, returned to a team that had zero slack to spare.
The hours didn't go to waste. They went to the work that had been deferred for months — configuration improvements, compliance documentation, the strategic projects that leadership had been waiting on. The search tax didn't just shrink. For most routine questions, it disappeared entirely. And the team that used to be experts in searching became experts in solving again.
See how Mando can transform your team's knowledge
See how leading organizations use Mando to preserve institutional knowledge and accelerate onboarding.
See how Mando can transform your team's knowledge
See how leading organizations use Mando to preserve institutional knowledge and accelerate onboarding.
See how Mando can transform your team's knowledge
See how leading organizations use Mando to preserve institutional knowledge and accelerate onboarding.
Clarity across every corner of your most mission critical applications
Solutions
Company
Clarity across every corner of your most mission critical applications
Solutions
Company
Clarity across every corner of your most mission critical applications
Solutions
Company