Aiming to grow by 400 people to around 1,000 globally in 2021, Collibra knew its legacy Human Capital Management system was not scalable or robust enough to support a truly globalized People function. The legacy system’s service limitations also exposed People Team members to time-consuming manual tasks, restricting their ability to develop leadership skills. It was time for change.
We needed a system that delivered external service functionality for our employees.
Director of People Operations
Why Workday.
A scalable platform delivering a great user experience.
The Collibra team quickly recognized that Workday offered the scalability the organization needed to support its rapid growth. Just as important, it also delivered entirely new strategic capabilities, enabling the company to respond to customer requests on integrating Collibra data with Workday. Third, it met the wider needs of the business by enabling it to provide authorized managers and leaders with streamlined access to all the data they need.
Another key factor was the response among employees to Workday. According to Mairi Cameron, Collibra’s Director of People Operations, “People were really excited about it. We have a lot of employees who have been at tech companies where they had Workday, and they were very keen to work with it again thanks to its excellent ease of use.”
The People Team is definitely much more visible thanks to Workday, so we can give everybody access to the latest information.
Director of People Operations
Results.
Collective working for a global HR team.
Thanks to Workday, Collibra’s People Team (based in Belgium, New York, Poland and the UK) is now able to work collectively instead of focusing on local issues, delivering the globalized approach the company was after.
Workday has also streamlined a range of administrative tasks that used to keep Collibra’s People Team extremely busy. For example, reporting on Absence that used to take weeks now involves just a few keystrokes. The number of requests the department receives has fallen too, as leaders and managers across Collibra have gained instant access to information freeing them up to take on more strategic functions.
As well as having a positive effect on the People Team’s work-life balance, reduced workloads have also enabled members to take on more responsibility and develop their leadership skills. As a result, the importance of the People Team’s contribution has gained in visibility across the organization.
It could take weeks to pull together requested information—now we can do it instantly.
Director of People Operations
Rapid deployment and easy integration.
Speed and ease of implementation were important success factors for Collibra, as the team was keen to accelerate the recruitment programme which had fallen slightly behind target during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Mairi Cameron, “It was really rapid, just four months, and we haven’t had any major issues arising from that speed.” Integration, too,was straightforward. “In fact, we managed to set up integrations on our own, with no help from consultants or third parties. It was a real ‘high fives’ moment for us: it was so good, so easy, and we would never have been able to do it with any other product.”
Self service supports faster decision making.
The speed and quality of decision-making by management has improved dramatically, enabled by immediate access to essential data on easy-to-understand dashboards.
As Mairi Cameron explains, “The new information that managers can now get is phenomenal, about factors like attrition, new hires and time off. We actually sometimes wonder why we’re only rarely hearing from some teams but now they have everything they need at the touch of a button, they’re not interested in sending emails anymore!”
We wouldn’t be able to deliver the service levels we’re achieving now if we didn’t have Workday.
Director of People Operations