Until a few years ago, Cambio Healthcare Systems AB had no HR system in place. According to the Swedish company’s Solutions Manager Steffi Sylvester, this was an increasingly important issue for the organization, which is one of Scandinavia’s leading providers of innovative healthcare solutions.
“There were no systems at all for managing our human capital, meaning HR was doing everything on Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and generating mounds of paperwork,” Sylvester says. “The legacy system we were using in finance, meanwhile, didn’t always provide the security we were looking for, so it was decided to look for new solutions covering both areas.”
Implementing a sustainable solution for the long term.
After a brief period of research, Cambio decided to go with Workday as a one-stop solution, a move Sylvester feels 100% confident about. “The journey with Workday has been amazing,” Sylvester says. “We really benefited from having no HR solution in place to start with, meaning we didn’t have to transfer huge amounts of legacy system data. It also meant we could take baby steps, tweaking and configuring as we went, creating skinny business processes and ensuring they were sustainable over the long term.
“This also meant that Workday was highly appropriate for a relatively small business like ours, with around 950 employees and 150 contingent workers,” Sylvester continues. “You don’t need to employ thousands of people to implement Workday—just make sure you use it wisely wherever you think it meets the needs of your structure.”
Workday gives us the opportunity to build skinny business processes, keep everything simple, and let the system configure according to how needs evolve.
Steffi Sylvester, Solutions Manager
A planned approach to “delivering something amazing.”
From the earliest days, the Cambio implementation team had an eye on the future. As Sylvester puts it, “Every time you implement a system, you have to look at what other additions you can bring along. So on the HR front, we went first with just Workday Human Capital Management core, and have subsequently added Workday Learning and Workday Performance Management.”
According to Sylvester, the Workday deployment delivered “something amazing from a human resources perspective. The HR team finds using the system really efficient. They now have the option to do everything in one system and on just one platform. It’s very secure,” Sylvester adds. “You can see what’s been done. You can get it to go ahead and make changes wherever needed. And it’s always on the go—everything is just a click away.
“Now, if one of our people changes location, it’s the work of a few minutes to update everything that’s necessary because all the information is in one place,” Sylvester says. “And even if you have to make other significant changes, you have options to add all the documentation and signatures you need. In terms of the time that’s being saved, it’s amazing from a human resource perspective.”
That’s far from everything Workday enabled Cambio to do. “You also have the ability to grab a report any time you want,” Sylvester says. “A report that gives you live data and real-time information—it’s one of the biggest leaps forward we’ve made since the days when we had no system at all.”
When security is “the key to everything.”
The advances made by Cambio’s finance team are no less significant than those achieved in HR. “Initially, we went with Workday Financial Management before adding Workday Adaptive Planning,” Sylvester says. “And again, the results have been outstanding.”
In Sylvester’s view, the primary steps forward have been in the connected areas of auditing and security. “It works very well for auditors. It’s easy for them now to look into journals, into insights, invoices, customer references—whatever they need to see,” Sylvester says.
“But I think security is the key to everything,” Sylvester adds. “With our old finance system, anyone in the company had access to just about any report they wanted. That’s not sustainable, and ultimately would make us noncompliant. Now, with Workday we have a setup where project managers can access what they need, but they cannot access everything,” Sylvester continues. “We have the proper controls in place based on the requirements of different user groups, which means specific reports can only be accessed by authorized project managers, or business-unit managers, or business controllers.”
Cambio’s new finance system is highly flexible, too. According to Sylvester, “When we gave our auditors a complete view of Workday, they were somewhat blown away with it all, because they no longer have to ask us if we have particular files or references. They can go straight there.”
I’m a big fan of the Workday Community portal: is there anything I can learn from other customers? Is there anything I could give back to them from my implementation experience?
Steffi Sylvester, Solutions Manager
Driving improvement through constant learning.
Looking to the future, Sylvester is adamant that Cambio stay on top of changing needs and what’s in the Workday pipeline. “Just because you’re live and focusing on day-to-day activities doesn’t mean you can ignore upcoming releases from Workday,” Sylvester says.
“Also, you must keep asking questions and learning. I’m a big fan of the Workday Community portal,” Sylvester says. “I always reach out and ask questions, and it’s important we all connect with one another to understand how we have set up the system and overcome challenges along the way. With Workday Community, application management services partners, and regional user groups, there is a massive amount of support available.”
Sylvester expects even more support in the near future, primarily from new and emerging AI and machine learning (ML) solutions. “We’d all like everything to be more efficient, to involve less manual work and with more task-oriented actions being driven through AI and more insights using ML,” Sylvester says.
“I am trying to learn everything I can about this at the moment, and Workday has built a microsite with a great deal of information on it about the capabilities that are becoming available,” Sylvester adds. “This is my homework right now, and I would recommend anybody to look into it and learn all they can about what’s coming.”