Optimising Financial Data Integration with Workday’s Accounting Centre This blog post was authored by Connor McCalley - Associate Director, BPI Finance on Protiviti's Technology Insights blog.Accounting Centre, powered by Workday’s Prism Analytics, modernises how organisations can handle large volumes of financially related data. With Accounting Centre, enterprises can leverage the advanced capabilities of the Prism engine to integrate non-Workday transactions into the general ledger by not only ingesting and processing external data but also enriching them with detailed attributes. This integration facilitates the creation of custom reports and dashboards that combine external data sources with existing Workday data, offering new insights and enhanced visibility.By incorporating Accounting Centre into the toolkit, organisations equip themselves with a powerful tool that streamlines accounting processes and elevates their overall technology infrastructure. Before implementing Accounting Centre, however, it’s important to consider the organisation’s objectives and establish a comprehensive technology strategy based on relevant use cases. Topics IT Management, Applications and Transformation Technology Enablement Value-enabled use casesHigh volume non-Workday transactional data – One prevalent use case is the integration of applications that handle high volumes of transactions outside traditional ERP boundaries. A prime example is the integration of claims processing systems for healthcare payers. These systems process, adjudicate and pay (or deny) millions of provider or patient claims annually. These claims represent a significant portion of expenses for payers and occur outside traditional ERP, making it challenging and time-consuming to gain financial insights due to data silos between claims processing and financial systems.With Accounting Centre, claims data can be integrated and summarised into accounting journals. Unlike traditional summarised posting, Accounting Centre retains the link to the source data, enabling organisations to develop detailed drill-to reports and custom dashboards that combine expense journals (from Workday) and claims data (from boundary systems). Maintaining this link provides powerful insights into claims and reimbursement data, simplifying financial result explanation and enhancing financial planning and analysis. Similar use cases are applicable across industries, whether in financial services, for mortgage companies, retail, public sector and many others.Disparate ERP consolidation – Another common use case for Accounting Centre is the integration and consolidation of multiple accounting systems into a centralised ERP or reporting source. Accounting Centre enables individualised mapping from each originating ERP, offering flexibility in boundary system mapping while supporting the harmonisation of accounting and reporting practices. This centralised approach allows organisations to ingest and consolidate data from disparate ERPs into one centralised location without having to significantly update source applications.By generating accounting journals, Accounting Centre can incorporate varying levels of detail from a consolidation perspective, giving organisations greater control over the underlying details within consolidated balances. This feature is particularly beneficial for growing organisations, as it provides a unified platform for accounting and reporting while longer-term technology roadmaps and implementation strategies are developed and implemented.Regardless of whether organisations choose to fully adopt Workday as their consolidated ERP as part of their technology modernisation strategy, Accounting Centre can still be leveraged to facilitate consolidation of disparate information across the technology landscape.Historical general ledger conversion – Accounting Centre serves as a pivotal tool for implementation teams in converting historical general ledger (GL) activity or balances into Workday. This innovative approach supersedes the traditional journal connector inbound process by utilising Accounting Centre features like varied accounting sources, dynamic mapping tables and robust error processing options. This enhanced flexibility, combined with the relative ease of setup and maintenance, has led many organisations to adopt Accounting Centre as their primary tool for GL conversion activities during implementations.Key Accounting Centre capabilitiesEase of configuration – The configuration of Accounting Centre is designed with accessibility in mind, reducing the technological barrier to entry and allowing individuals with even minor-to-moderate technical skills to easily configure flows, maintain mappings and manage ledger postings. While accessible, there is still a need for comprehensive solution design, prompting many organisations to engage consultants or other subject matter experts during the implementation phase. However, ongoing maintenance requires significantly less technical expertise compared to traditional journal connector integrations.Flexible mapping tables – Accounting Centre also introduces additional flexibility with its mapping tables that can utilise “wild card” characters to define a “default” mapping destination. This feature allows configurators to categorise specific accounting criteria distinctly, facilitating differentiated Workday destinations for a single data element (i.e., legacy ledger account).Data enrichment – A key differentiator for Accounting Centre is its ability to enrich inbound data with elements from source systems or other calculable and relatable elements within Workday. This capability allows organisations to enhance transaction details and generate reports based on these enriched fields without being limited to the constrained list of custom worktags or custom organisations.Moreover, data enrichment can also utilise existing worktags and Accounting Centre tables, allowing workflow logic to attach boundary system elements to existing Workday worktags beyond just ledger accounts and spend/revenue categories. As organisations strive to adopt more flexible models and promote holistic, full-suite solutions, leveraging Accounting Centre as an enrichment tool can significantly reduce reliance on boundary system infrastructure for reporting and reconciliation.Getting startedSuccessfully leveraging Accounting Centre begins with establishing a comprehensive enterprise solution design and defining clear objectives. By first considering the desired outcomes of technology modernisation and implementations, organisations can assess how Accounting Centre aligns with these objectives to maximise its impact.Next, organisations should outline their existing technology landscape, identifying boundary applications that meet the criteria discussed earlier. This step helps in pinpointing systems suitable for Accounting Centre implementation. Once these candidates are identified, they can be prioritised based on their potential impact and ease of implementation.To learn more about our Workday consulting services, contact us.
