Archiving Legacy ERP Data Before a Workday Go-Live

Most health systems plan a Workday program as an implementation. The legacy side of the program, the Infor Lawson, Kronos, or other ERP and workforce systems that Workday replaces, is often left for after go-live. That order creates two problems: the legacy environment still has to run through cutover, and years of HR, finance, supply chain, and payroll history still have to be reachable after it is switched off. This post lays out how to plan the archive alongside the implementation, using the approach InterScripts is applying with Akron Children’s.

What should be archived before a Workday go-live?

Archive the transactional and workforce history that Workday will not carry forward: general ledger detail, accounts payable and receivable, purchasing and supply chain records, payroll and timekeeping, and the documents attached to them. At Akron Children’s, that scope covers more than 13 years of Infor CloudSuite, Lawson, and UKG Kronos data, ingested into BytePad so the source systems can be retired after Workday goes live.

The practical test is simple. For every data set in the legacy environment, ask who will need it after go-live and for how long. Finance needs closed-period ledgers for audit. HR and payroll need historical time and pay records to answer employee and regulator inquiries. Supply chain needs purchase history for contract disputes and recalls. Anything with a retention obligation or a realistic lookup need belongs in the archive; anything that Workday converts in full can be verified and left behind.

Why not keep the old ERP running in read-only mode?

A read-only Lawson environment still costs licensing, hosting, patching, and the people who know how to query it. It also leaves a second system of record with its own security surface. The Akron Children’s program is designed so that staff can address audit requests and payroll inquiries without relying on a read-only Lawson environment at all: the records live in BytePad, and AI Global Search locates them across structured and unstructured data in plain language.

InterScripts legacy application support exists for the period when the old system must stay up. The goal, though, is a dated exit. Sustainment covers the months between contract and cutover; the archive is what makes the shutdown possible once Workday is live and reconciled.

Who needs access to archived ERP data after go-live?

Four groups show up in nearly every program, and each has a different retrieval pattern.

• Finance and audit need period-level ledgers, journal detail, and supporting documents, usually in response to an external auditor’s sample request with a deadline.
• HR and payroll need an individual employee’s history: pay statements, time records, leave balances, and the changes behind them.
• Supply chain needs purchase orders, receipts, and vendor history for a specific item or contract.
• Compliance and legal need defensible retrieval with a record of who looked at what and when.

An archive that only stores database exports serves none of these groups well. BytePad stores the retention schedule, the immutable archive, and the tamper-evident audit log in one platform, and connects to source systems through 100+ pre-built connectors that include ERP, EDI, and file shares. That is what lets a payroll analyst or an auditor find an answer without an engineer running a query against a legacy database.

When should the archive project start?

At the same time as the Workday program, not after it. Akron Children’s engaged InterScripts in November 2025 for both needs together: operational support for the Infor environment while the internal ERP team implements Workday, and archiving of the legacy history so the environment can be retired afterward. Running both as one coordinated program means the data conversion, integration, and testing work inside the Workday program and the archive ingestion outside it are planned against the same calendar.

Starting early also protects the implementation team. The internal ERP staff at Akron Children’s stay focused on Workday design, configuration, testing, and deployment, while InterScripts handles day-to-day Infor operations, including incident resolution, support tickets, troubleshooting, application maintenance, upgrades, and patches. Neither track waits on the other.

How does the archive fit the retention obligations?

Financial, payroll, and supply chain records carry their own retention rules, and in a health system they sit alongside clinical records governed by HIPAA and state law. Hospital record retention requirements vary by state: federal Medicare Conditions of Participation set a floor of at least 5 years, most states require longer, and the retention-by-state reference on this site lists the statutory periods. The archive should apply a retention schedule per record class, hold records immutably for that period, and dispose of them defensibly when it ends. Keeping everything forever in a read-only system is not a retention policy; it is the absence of one.

What does a coordinated Workday and archive program look like?

InterScripts runs Epic and Workday Centers of Excellence from one bench of 264+ credentialed engineers, including 84+ Workday-certified consultants, with delivery across the United States, Colombia, and India. The Epic and Workday services practice covers Workday HCM, Financial Management, and Supply Chain Management, integrations through EIB, Studio, and Core Connectors, and ongoing managed support. BytePad supplies the archive, running under HITRUST r2, SOC 2 Type II, and ISO 27001:2022 controls, with deployment options that include Azure Government and AWS GovCloud for public-sector customers.

A typical sequence looks like this:

1. Inventory the legacy ERP and workforce systems, the data sets in each, and the groups that need them after go-live.
2. Assign a retention class and an owner to every data set.
3. Sustain the legacy environment through cutover under a defined support scope.
4. Ingest the history into the archive while the Workday build proceeds, and validate counts and samples against the source.
5. Verify after go-live that converted balances reconcile and that archived records answer the audit, payroll, and supply chain questions users actually ask.
6. Retire the source systems on a scheduled date, with the archive as the system of record for history.

What is the result for the health system?

Retirement of the source systems after Workday goes live, with HR, finance, supply chain, and audit teams keeping access to the information they need. The Akron Children’s program is in progress, and InterScripts has not published quantified outcome metrics for it; the intended outcomes above are the ones published on this site. Health systems planning an ERP transition and a legacy retirement together can contact the InterScripts team to review scope for both tracks.