I have personal experience of Workday - the UI is not great from a user perspective - I suspect a consequence of the generic design that allows configurability.

I have personal experience of Workday - the UI is not great from a user perspective - I suspect a consequence of the generic design that allows configurability. The whole challenge with software ( and why it keeps getting written again and again ) is the challenge of balancing flexibility with usability. There is difference between whether the software can technically do something and whether people can achieve that task using the software day to day. The other problem with systems like Workday ( and this isn't Workdays fault per se ) - is that they are used as a mechanism to 'cut' HR operational costs by simply moving the cost from HR to everyone else via 'self-service'. Actually most people want to simply talk to somebody - explain what they want and have somebody make it happen - 'self service' only really works for frequently done things where the time saving offsets the time taken to try and work out how to do the operation in the tool for the first time ( or the first time in ages ). Same thing in finance systems - when large companies move from a purchasing team to a 'self-service' model - most line of business departments simply recreate their own purchasing teams as people who order stuff infrequently have no idea how to fill the forms in. As I said before - it's about thinking about the people in the system, not the tool. Thinking just about the tool leads to tool implementators blaming lazy users and users blaming tools.