Workday HCM Core, Absence Management, Help, Journeys, Payroll. Five-year master agreement renewing at end of contract year four. Co-termed with Payroll on a single end-date. Original 2019 deal was negotiated internally without external benchmark data; the 2024 renewal was the first time the client engaged an independent advisor.
A Fortune 500 technology company with 12,000 employees was approaching the end of its five-year Workday HCM agreement. The original 2019 contract had been negotiated internally without external benchmark data, and the PEPY had compounded with three annual uplifts in the 5-7% range. Workday's first formal renewal quote came in at a 6.2% annual increase on an already-above-market PEPY, with no concessions on true-up methodology or downward true-down rights.
Internally, procurement believed the deal was already 'best and final' after two negotiation cycles with Workday's account team. The CHRO and CFO had concerns about the run-rate trajectory but lacked benchmark data to push back. The renewal date was nine months out, which gave us a viable negotiation runway but no time to waste.
Compounding the challenge: the contract co-termed HCM with Payroll, which Workday's deal desk had been using as cross-leverage in conversations — implying that any push-back on HCM would create concessions Workday would need to recover on Payroll. The reality, as we demonstrated through benchmark data, was the opposite. The bundle had been priced above market on both modules.
They saved us $3.8 million on a single HCM renewal. The gain share model meant we had zero risk — and the savings they documented were larger than our entire procurement team's annual budget.
We engaged on a gain share basis with a defined baseline (Workday's first formal renewal quote) and a 22% fee on documented, verified savings, capped at $1.2M. The client retained the bulk of the savings; we shared in the upside only if we delivered. The engagement ran twenty-two weeks from kickoff to signed renewal.
Week one to four was benchmark and discovery. We pulled the client's PEPY, true-up history, and module mix; benchmarked against twelve anonymized peer companies in the 8,000-18,000 employee range across technology, professional services, and SaaS verticals; and built the leverage file. The benchmark data showed the client's PEPY was 18% above the median for their cohort and 27% above the best-in-cohort.
Week five to twelve was negotiation strategy and the structured Workday engagement. We rewrote the redline package, focused on six specific levers: PEPY reset to cohort median; true-up methodology rewrite (cap annual true-ups, add downward true-down rights, exclude contingent workers); annual uplift cap at 3%; co-term realignment to enable cleaner future cycles; bundling of Absence, Help, and Journeys at a blended discount; and removal of two SKUs that had been added speculatively in 2019 and never deployed.
Week thirteen to twenty was the live negotiation with Workday's deal desk. Three rounds of redlines, two executive escalations, and one structured competitive process. The competitive process was not a threat to switch — the client had no intention of leaving Workday — but a disciplined RFI to two alternative platforms that established credible optionality. That optionality moved Workday's deal desk from 'best and final' to a meaningful re-quote.
Week twenty-one and twenty-two was contract execution. Final redline cycle, legal review, signature. The signed agreement reflected every lever we had pushed on.
The true-up methodology rewrite alone was worth the engagement. We had been losing $180K a year on contingent worker math we didn't even know was in the contract.
Total documented savings against the baseline (Workday's first formal renewal quote): $3.8M over the new five-year term, with a present-value calculation that exceeded $3.1M. The savings broke into multiple components, each independently verified against Workday's quote artifacts.
The structural wins were as important as the dollar savings. Annual uplifts were capped at 3% (down from Workday's 6.2% proposal). True-up methodology was rewritten to exclude contingent workers and add downward true-down rights, eliminating an asymmetric clause that had cost the client roughly $180K per year in the prior agreement. Co-term was realigned to support a cleaner negotiation runway for the next cycle.
Our fee under the gain share model was a single-digit percentage of the client's total contract value and a fraction of the documented year-one savings. The CHRO described the engagement publicly as 'the highest-ROI vendor engagement we ran in the fiscal year' — though they declined attribution by name, which is standard for this kind of work.
Every Workday engagement is unique, but the negotiation discipline transfers. We run all engagements under one of two commercial models — you choose.
Scoped deliverables. Predictable cost. You know the fee before we start. Benchmarks, redline strategy, and live deal support across every contract SKU, integration, and professional services line item.
Zero upfront cost. Our fee is a percentage of verified, documented contract savings over baseline. No savings, no fee. Aligned incentives, end-to-end.
The savings curve flattens sharply inside six months. If you're more than nine months out, you have a full negotiation runway. If you're inside three months, we can still help, but the leverage set is smaller. Either way, the first conversation is free.
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