Governance-driven enterprise integration architecture for modern HCM and legacy ERP synchronization: a Workday–COINS ERP reference framework

Abstract

Cloud-based human capital management (HCM) platforms and legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems frequently operate with different data models, identifiers, processing capabilities, and governance responsibilities. These differences create challenges in maintaining consistent workforce information, coordinating employee lifecycle changes, and establishing traceable integration processes. This study develops a governance-driven enterprise integration architecture for synchronizing a modern HCM platform with a legacy ERP system. The proposed framework explicitly defines system-of-record responsibilities, cross-system identity management, data validation and transformation, synchronization and orchestration, exception handling, auditability, and extensibility. The architecture is examined through a case-based scenario evaluation using representative employee lifecycle scenarios, including onboarding, workforce updates, organizational changes, payroll-related changes, and termination. Each scenario is evaluated against predefined architectural criteria covering identity consistency, data integrity, synchronization reliability, governance, auditability, and extensibility. The analysis indicates how explicit governance mechanisms can be incorporated into the integration architecture rather than treated as separate operational controls. The study contributes a reusable reference framework for integrating modern HCM platforms with legacy ERP environments while maintaining clear data ownership, controlled synchronization, and operational traceability. The study also identifies limitations associated with single-case, architecture-focused evaluation and suggest directions for multi-case and empirical validation.