AVIVA

Aviva Selects Workday to Support Global Strategy

Aviva is one of the world's largest insurance companies, with 46,000 employees in 28 countries. The Londonbased company's strategy is to operate as a single global organization that rapidly responds to customer needs. It required a modern human capital management system to support this strategy, and in February 2010 Aviva chose Workday as its global solution, implementing it first in its European business.

Workday's intuitive, easy-to-use interface tops the list of attributes that made it Aviva's choice for its first worldwide, self-service human resources system, says Andy Moffat, Aviva's European director of human resources. In a phased rollout through the end of 2012, Aviva will lower its IT cost through Workday's softwareas- a-service model.

More importantly, Workday will provide managers and employees with improved insight, decision-making, and collaboration across the global workforce. And that fits right into Aviva's transformation into a company that responds faster than ever to changing markets and needs.

"There's no question that our organization is changing culturally," Moffat says. He cites the company's firstever global intranet for employees, Aviva World, which promotes one global agenda and strategy, rather than a federation of 28 countries. Workday plays a big role in making that cultural shift happen, Moffat says.

"In the past, if you sat in Vancouver, the only job openings you could see were in Canada," Moffat says. "Now you can apply anywhere online. It's about shifting behaviors, and helping people see and collaborate on information."

Andrea Moneta, CEO of Aviva Europe, sometimes needs details on Aviva's European workforce, broken down by country and market. "In the past, that would have taken 10 business days, a lot of phone calls, and a lot of manual manipulation to get that answer," Moffat says. "When we deploy Workday, [Moneta] won't even have to ask me that question. He will be able to do it himself, easily and quickly."

Workday Replaces More Than 100 HR Systems

Aviva created four geographic management regions as part of its new strategy: United Kingdom, Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific. Until then, business units in 28 countries—many that became part of Aviva through mergers and acquisitions—often operated autonomously, which included using their own suppliers. As a result, Aviva was supporting 112 different HR systems in Europe alone. The only way forward, Moffat says, was to choose a single global system-of-record that provided selfservice capabilities and allowed operational effectiveness across regions.

Aviva was already using a traditional on-premise system as its dominant HR system in Europe, where more than 40% of its business is located. That system was also a finalist in the evaluation, but Aviva wanted to know if there was an alternative system that better fit its needs.

Aviva's HR managers asked their IT colleagues to recommend an innovative and best-of-breed system for human resources, and IT suggested they take a look at Workday. More broadly, Aviva sees tremendous value in the software-as-a-service model for enterprise applications and is looking to adopt it wherever it makes sense.

"The insurance industry is often seen as being behind the curve, but Aviva is innovative," Moffat says. "Workday represented a modern way to do business, both internally and externally. From an HR perspective, I'd rather be at the front end of the curve."

Modern Approach Beats Traditional On-Premise

Aviva had plenty of experience with its traditional HR vendor, but had different versions of the vendor's software running on various regional servers. There was no way Aviva could scale the legacy provider's software into a global, company-wide system that could be adapted to all markets. One option was to upgrade every server worldwide to the traditional vendor's most current version of software.

At the same time, Aviva saw many benefits to Workday's SaaS model, which centralizes HR systems offsite in Workday's data center, letting employees and managers access Workday over the Internet. Workday handles all updates, so Aviva would never again have to grapple with many different versions of software running on hundreds of servers across the world. As an alternative to Workday, the traditional vendor offered Aviva the option of hosting its software in a SaaS-like model through a third-party.

After a close comparison, Aviva believed Workday's SaaS infrastructure and approach to be superior. Aviva, however, still had some concerns about Workday. Its legacy provider was a very large, entrenched company, while Workday was a relative newcomer. So Aviva decided to put Workday to the test.

"We said to Workday, 'We don't know you, and we don't have a strong relationship with you. You don't have a presence in our European markets. We need to experience what you can do for us in real time on the ground,'" Moffat says.

Aviva asked Workday to start with Hungary, Romania, and the Czech Republic. Those countries typically aren't considered strategic to software companies, so their national languages are among the last to be supported. Workday had to show it was flexible and responsive by proving it could quickly ramp up language support and meet those markets' needs. The Workday project started in November 2009 and lasted three months, with Aviva paying close attention to how Workday performed as a self-service system. In late December, an employee survey resulted in 80% satisfaction with Workday, and another survey, when the project ended in February 2010, showed an 86% satisfaction rate. Aviva was extremely pleased with that result.

"Because of the nature of the product, we found the training short and intuitive," Moffat says. "It's very similar to the way you would use an Internet search engine. People can navigate Workday very easily and are less stressed about getting things wrong. The descriptions are natural language and intuitive."

Also important was how Workday communicated with Aviva and responded to its requests during the project. Moffat says, "Workday took the time to understand our needs. I felt like I was being partnered with an organization that had my interests at heart—not like I was being sold software."

Fifty Percent Cost Reduction

In Europe alone, Aviva estimates total IT costs will drop 40% to 50% when it's finished replacing existing onpremise systems with Workday. Still, Aviva's choice of Workday never came down to a price war for the lowest possible cost. Ultimately, Aviva chose Workday for reasons that were just as important—and in some cases more important—than cost. Aviva determined Workday's user friendliness, flexibility, scalability, and SaaS-based self-selfservice infrastructure would better support Aviva's efforts to improve global workforce collaboration and market responsiveness than anything its legacy vendor could offer.

Prior to its decision of Workday, however, Aviva conducted extensive due diligence on Workday's infrastructure and processes for data protection. As an insurance company, Aviva goes to great lengths to ensure data security and privacy for its customers, and it expects the same of suppliers. "Unless they can beat our extremely stringent security requirements, we don't do business with them," Moffat says. Aviva did a thorough check on Workday's compliance assessment, and sought extensive reference checks from existing Workday clients. "There were absolutely zero concerns raised on security provisions," Moffat says.

Aviva plans to have 50% of its workforce on Workday by the first quarter of 2011, including those in Europe and the U.S. Its Asia Pacific rollout will start next year. By the end of 2012, 28 countries and 46,000 employees should be on Workday.

Because Workday uses a SaaS delivery model, it's requiring far less work by Aviva's IT staff than what would have been required for a global on-premise software rollout. Rather than assign execution teams to specific regions, Aviva is able to use a companywide deployment strategy with Workday. "That lets us do regional rollouts quicker, and it costs less to do them," Moffat says. High-priced consultants, which are common for on-premise rollouts at many companies, haven't been needed at all during the European rollout now underway, he says.

The Value of Employee Self-Service

The self-service aspect of Workday is a huge boon, Moffat says. The number of emails the HR department receives from employees has reduced dramatically, and "that lets HR focus on more value-added tasks," he says. Employees, meanwhile, appreciate having control over their personal information. If an employee has a life change, such as the birth of a new child, the information can be added to Workday. "Having greater ownership over their own data is very important to people," Moffat says.

The traditional HR systems Aviva Europe used in the past required managers to undergo a complex signon process and required at least some knowledge of reporting. For employees, self-service wasn't even an option. With Workday, employees will be able to view their pay slips and salary history online. They'll track their career progression, research information on other career paths within Aviva, or find information on criteria for promotions, Moffat says.

Workday is improving manager-employee communications, and some managers have started using its talent management capabilities. In the coming months, Aviva plans to decommission its current talentmanagement system, allowing managers and employees to use those features available as part of the regular Workday subscription. Managers can get a much better picture of the Aviva workforce at country, regional, and global levels. "It will provide managers with a greater understanding of the aspirations, capabilities, and costs of their organizations," Moffat says.

All of these benefits made possible by Workday are making Aviva more competitive. "It goes back to why we use technology—to provide a better service to our customers and gain better understanding of the people working for us," Moffat says. "It's to let employees access information and do their jobs more effectively, and represent the organization more effectively. It's to be able to attract and get talent into the organization, which clearly is a competitive advantage, and to be more effective decision makers. Workday lets us do all those things."