Built on Workday: How a US Benefits Provider Turned Fragile Integrations into a Scalable Product

When you’re a U.S.-based benefits provider whose customers all run Workday, integrations are not just a technical detail—they are the product.

For years, our client relied on a mix of Workday-certified RaaS reports and Workday Studio integrations to exchange data with each customer’s tenant: benefit eligibility, leave of absence (LOA) transactions, customer billing, and more. It worked—but it did not scale.

OnoeX partnered with this provider to reimagine their model on the new Built on Workday platform, using Workday Extend and Workday Orchestrate to turn one-off integrations into a configurable, upgradeable product available on the Workday Marketplace.

This article walks through the journey—and what it means for other Workday-centric benefits vendors.

The Challenge: Point Integrations That Don’t Scale

Our client had grown rapidly alongside Workday’s adoption. Over time, hundreds of mutual customers were onboarded using:

• Workday RaaS (Report-as-a-Service) for eligibility and LOA data extracts

• Workday Studio integrations for complex transactional flows and billing

• Custom logic embedded per customer to handle field overrides, filters, and special rules

While technically sound, this model created several pain points:

1. Lengthy, Expensive Onboarding

Each new customer required:

• Custom configuration of RaaS reports and Studio packages

• Back-and-forth testing with HRIT and benefits teams

• Manual documentation and handoffs

This translated into long implementation timelines and high onboarding costs, especially painful for mid-sized customers.

2. Fragile Version Control

Every time the provider updated an integration—for example, adding a new field or complying with a regulatory change—they had to:

• Package a new Studio build

• Communicate change details to each customer

• Coordinate deployment windows across multiple tenants

There was no central versioning or automated push—updates meant repeated effort and inconsistent adoption.

3. Out-of-Date and Inaccurate Billing Data

Billing relied on periodic data extracts that were:

• Often delayed

• Sometimes misaligned with the customer’s latest Workday data

• Difficult to reconcile without manual work

The provider saw slower payments and, at times, underbilling, because the data foundation wasn’t consistently current.

Rethinking the Model: From Integration Projects to a Built on Workday Product

Instead of continuing to scale through more RaaS reports and Studio packages, the provider made a strategic shift:

“What if our integrations were not separate projects, but a product that lives inside each customer’s Workday tenant?”

That’s where Built on Workday, Workday Extend, and Workday Orchestrate come in.

Together, OnoeX and the provider designed an end-to-end customer portal—a Built on Workday application that customers can download directly from the Workday Marketplace and deploy within their own tenant.

Behind the scenes, intelligent Orchestrate flows handle the heavy lifting. On the surface, customers experience a simple, Workday-native UI tailored to benefits integration and billing workflows.

The New Solution: A Workday-Native Customer Portal

The new Built on Workday app acts as a single pane of glass for each customer to configure, monitor, and support their relationship with the benefits provider.

1. Self-Service Integration Configuration

Instead of custom Studio tweaks and one-off RaaS adjustments, customers now configure integrations via a simple Workday Extend UI:

• Field overrides (e.g., local mappings for eligibility or LOA codes)

• Data filters (e.g., specific populations, locations, or plans)

• Custom fields exposed through Extend objects where needed

Configuration is stored as data—not code—so onboarding becomes a guided setup rather than a bespoke development effort.

2. Real-Time Integration Monitoring

Within the same portal, customers can:

• View integration run history

• Check status details and error messages

• Drill into payload summaries where appropriate

Workday Orchestrate flows feed this telemetry back into the Extend app, enabling both the provider and the client to see what’s happening—without logging into external tools.

3. In-Workday Support Access

The portal provides deep links and connections to the provider’s support channels. Customers can:

• Open tickets from inside the Built on Workday app

• Include contextual integration details automatically

• Route issues directly to the right support queue

This reduces back-and-forth and ensures the provider’s support team gets the technical context they need from day one.

4. Real-Time Announcements and Change Communication

The app includes a dedicated announcement center, where the benefits provider can:

• Publish release notes, maintenance windows, and policy or file layout changes

• Target messages to specific customer segments

• Ensure important updates are visible where HRIT and benefits admins already work—inside Workday

No more scattered emails or PDFs that never make it to the right person.

5. Orchestrated Data Exchange Behind the Scenes

Under the hood, the app leverages multiple Workday Orchestrate flows—sync and async—to:

• Pull eligibility, LOA, and demographic data from each client’s Workday tenant

• Push confirmations, enrollment updates, and status changes back

• Support both scheduled and event-driven patterns

From the customer’s perspective, this is abstracted away. They define “what” they need through the portal; Orchestrate handles the “how”.

6. One-to-Many Version Control via Workday Marketplace

The biggest structural shift: upgrades become product releases, not integration fire drills.

When the provider needs to:

• Add a new field

• Adjust to a regulatory requirement

• Enhance monitoring or logging

They can ship a new version of the app into the Workday Marketplace. Customers adopt the new version through Workday’s standard update mechanisms—no more manual distribution of Studio archives or one-off scripts.

7. Billing Powered by Live Tenant Data

Billing is now a first-class part of the product. With the app deployed inside each customer’s Workday tenant and governed by Workday security, the provider can access current, tenant-sourced billing data—such as covered lives, elections, LOA statuses, and retro changes—through orchestrated flows. That means invoices are based on the same single source of truth HR and benefits teams rely on, resulting in more accurate, timely billing and fewer downstream disputes.

Business Impact: Faster Onboarding, Cleaner Data, Smoother Cash Flow

While each provider’s metrics will vary, this client is already seeing meaningful changes:

Faster Customer Onboarding

• Config-driven setup replaces weeks of custom integration work

• Repeatable playbooks standardize how new Workday customers are brought online

• Workday-native UX reduces training needs for HRIT and benefits admins

Lower Implementation and Maintenance Costs

• Fewer custom Studio builds to design, test, and support

• Centralized configuration and app logic reduces duplication

• Upgrades are delivered once, then rolled out broadly via the Marketplace

More Accurate, Timely Billing

• Orchestrate flows pull data on a more frequent and consistent cadence

• Improved monitoring surfaces data issues before invoices go out

• Cleaner, current data reduces disputes and short payments

Better Customer Experience

• A single Workday-native portal for configuration, monitoring, announcements, and support

• Less reliance on email threads and spreadsheets

• Stronger sense of partnership between the provider and their customers’ HRIT teams

Why Built on Workday + OnoeX Works for Benefits Providers

Benefits providers serving Workday customers increasingly face the same reality:

• Their “product” is deeply intertwined with Workday data and processes

• Customers expect faster time-to-value, not lengthy integration projects

• Regulatory and product changes demand agile, centralized version control

OnoeX exists precisely at this intersection. As a firm founded by the principal architects behind Workday Extend, we specialize in turning these kinds of integration-heavy use cases into repeatable, Workday-native products rather than one-off builds.

We bring:

• Deep expertise in Workday Extend, Workday Orchestrate, and integration patterns

• An AI-first mindset for layering intelligence and automation into Workday workflows when you’re ready for it

• Flexible engagement models suited to small and mid-sized organizations, not just large enterprises

What’s Next: From Integrations to a Product Roadmap

For this benefits provider, launching the Built on Workday app is just the beginning. With a product foundation in place, the roadmap can now include:

• Additional data domains (e.g., wellness programs, voluntary benefits)

• AI-assisted reconciliation or anomaly detection on billing data

• Deeper cross-platform experiences (e.g., surfacing key alerts in Slack or Microsoft Teams)

Most importantly, they’ve shifted from “How do we build the next integration?” to “What’s on our product roadmap for Workday customers?”

If you’re a benefits provider (or any vendor) with a Workday-heavy customer base and you’re feeling the pain of scaling RaaS and Studio integrations, we’d love to talk.

OnoeX helps Workday-focused organizations transform integrations into scalable, Built on Workday products that reduce friction, improve data quality, and unlock new revenue potential.