As a leading cloud-based human capital technology and services provider, Alight provides its clients with the resources to enhance their employees’ health, wealth, and well-being.
Alight is a thriving business and serves companies in more than 100 countries and 70 percent of the Fortune 100. To better support its expanding global operations, leaders sought a cost-effective solution to meet varying requirements such as invoices, accounting, and revenue recognition inside and outside of the U.S.
Michael Hemingway, director of finance at Alight, says staff uses Workday Professional Services Automation (PSA) to manage the entire lifecycle of client-facing billable projects. Workday PSA provides Alight’s resource managers, project managers, and finance teams with a single source of truth on all data types. Managers also leverage Workday PSA to match the right people with the right projects.
What challenges did Workday PSA help Alight overcome?
“Number one was making the billing process faster,” says Matt Simon, Alight’s senior finance manager. “Before, billing involved batch loading, which meant that even if we needed to get an invoice out quickly, it was a 24- to 48-hour process. Now that bill is out within hours.” Simon adds that tasks such as setting up a charge, booking revenue, and invoicing are performed almost instantaneously in one standardized system. “Before, we had many customized systems that were challenging to use.”
The ability to manage all of our projects, financials, and HCM in one system has been a critical part of our success.
Senior Finance Manager
What does Alight accomplish with Workday PSA?
Hemingway says Alight employees can create rate sheets and time-and-materials billing with different rules and exceptions by country. “We can accommodate those requirements without much manual effort to compile costs, generate an invoice, and recognize the revenue,” Hemingway says. Alight can also more efficiently address varied tax regulations. “One of the things we’ve been happy with is that for just about every country we operate in, we can accommodate those complex tax rules.”
Why did you choose Workday PSA?
“One of the most compelling reasons for choosing Workday PSA was knowing that this product would improve and grow and support our business as we expanded,” Hemingway says. Alight also found Workday PSA to be the right choice because it’s a single platform that can support a global business. “We needed to support all requirements in the U.S. and other parts of the world—particularly on the professional services aspect of it,” Hemingway says. “We’re a diverse business with a lot of different requirements. The ability to meet those accounting requirements, revenue recognition obligations, or different pricing engagements were key factors in choosing Workday PSA.”
We’re invoicing faster and getting cash in the door quicker with a system that’s easy to use for everyone.
Senior Finance Manager
What advice would you give industry peers?
“Be bullish about how fast you can move and adapt to technological advancements, especially with Workday PSA,” Hemingway says. “As Workday PSA continues to evolve and improve, be in it for the long-term and don’t just look at that initial implementation. There are constant enhancements, so be ready to adopt and take advantage of them because there’s a lot of continued benefit to unleash from the system.”
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