KANA

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To the marketplace, KANA is a leading provider of customer service solutions. To Workday, they're a leader in vision and innovation as the first company to adopt Workday's on-demand Human Capital Management (HCM) solution.

KANA's integrated products allow companies to deliver consistent, managed service across all channels, including email, chat, call centers, and web self-service. More than 600 companies worldwide have deployed KANA-including more than half of the world's largest 100 companies-to enhance the quality and efficiency of their own customer interactions

In its ten-year history, KANA has survived the highs and lows of an erratic technology industry. Today, KANA is reenergized by a number of key changes in the past two years: new senior management, new market opportunities, and significant customer and employee growth. Notably, from 2005 to 2006, the company expanded its sales operations considerably and more than doubled its software license revenue.

To support continued growth goals, KANA is focusing on building a systems architecture that will enhance operational efficiencies, giving employees the opportunity to concentrate more on customers and strategic issues. At the heart of that vision is Workday HCM and the on-demand delivery model.

Workday has filled a tremendous need for the company by providing a single source for quality data. After struggling with a homegrown HR system, KANA was ready for a new approach. The company made the switch to Workday and on-demand, and now HR processes such as merit increases are processed smoothly, managers have easier access to reports, employees can easily update their personal information online, and IT resources are not burdened by data center maintenance.

Why Workday?

“When I came to KANA, the company had an HR system that was ill-equipped to support our plans for aggressive growth,” explains CEO Mike Fields, who joined the company in late 2005. “As a public company facing increased reporting and compliance requirements, we had to make a change.”

Fields encouraged his Human Resources team to take a look at Workday.

“When I heard about what Dave Duffield was doing at Workday,” Fields explains, “my first reaction was 'We need to work with that company.' I've followed Dave's success with business applications over the years, and I know the kinds of teams he builds. HCM is an important system for our business, so my feeling is that if you're going to implement a new system, you want to do it with the best people in the industry.

“We were very eager to get a system in place,” added Fields. “At the same time, we wanted that system to be the foundation of a strong infrastructure for the entire company-not just a tool for the human resources team. Workday was really the only system we saw that demonstrated that vision for a company of KANA's size and budget, and that could scale with us as we grow.”

Implementation Summary and Results

KANA started their implementation in August 2006, before Workday finished building its first release. Working in partnership with Workday engineers and consultants, KANA went live with core HR functionality for the HR team ten weeks later, quickly followed by a staged rollout to employees.

“Managers have a lot more visibility into their people, and the HR team isn't overwhelmed by inquiries,” says Jay Jones, chief administrative officer. “We recently used Workday to realign our employees to match restructured cost centers, and the system responded beautifully.”

From and IT perspective, Jones agrees that Workday's on-demand model was also right for KANA.

“With on-demand solutions, the data center headache is gone,” he says, “I've known system administrators who were reduced to tears because they were too burned out from trying to get the performance right, the database tuned, and all the hardware and storage systems working properly. We don't have to worry about any of that now.”

Future Plans

In upcoming implementations phases, KANA is planning and upgrade to HCM 2.0, deployment of compensation functionality, and a benefits open enrollment.

“From our first official meeting with the Workday team, we've known that as Workday develops new capabilities and new solutions, we want to be out front implementing them," says Fields. “Not only is the solution highly strategic to our company, but the vision, the leadership, and the team are a great match for us.”