When leading Ukrainian software company SoftServe deployed Workday to help the organization with its digital transformation in 2017, the goal wasn’t just to modernize SoftServe’s technology platform.
The company was also looking to entirely dissolve and then rebuild all its HR practices with the help of the advanced, reliable, flexible, and resilient Workday architecture.
Maintaining an emotional commitment in difficult times.
In the view of SoftServe’s Workday Solutions Manager Orest Oleksovskyy, subsequent events have made the goal of emotional commitment significantly more important than initially believed. As Oleksovskyy says, “Obviously, the war has meant people have had to move both within and outside of Ukraine, including to countries where we have no offices or even representation.
“That’s where our technology base has fit in. Workday, particularly with Workday Extend, has enabled us to create our own bespoke apps and manage the business in an even more distributed environment than we experienced with the COVID-19 pandemic. Workday has helped us keep people emotionally connected to the company even through the most difficult times.”
One thing I love about Workday is that I know everything HR-related is going to be in one place, and it’s going to be connected to help me get the full picture.
Orest Oleksovskyy, Workday Solutions Manager
Using Workday Extend to revolutionize functionality.
According to Oleksovskyy, Workday Extend has been a revolutionary force for SoftServe’s onward development of the core platform. “Up to this point, we have deployed 12 new apps with Workday Extend, and have another 10 in the immediate development pipeline,” Oleksovskyy says.
This level of involvement aligns with the SoftServe personality. “We love experimentation,” Oleksovskyy says. “We sometimes go to extremes in new business processes and customization, and we like the way that it literally helps us to extend Workday native features.”
The first focus area for Oleksovskyy and team has therefore been tailoring core Workday functionality more precisely to SoftServe’s specific needs.
“Sometimes we might want to do something like create a simplified user interface,” Oleksovskyy explains. “Or at others, we might want to extend the existing Workday functionality. For example, something we’re looking at right now is creating a more sophisticated project-closure business process: we want our project managers to go through a checklist ensuring that we’re doing things such as shutting down processes or protecting customer data. Workday Extend is brilliant at that sort of thing.”
Building a bespoke HR ecosystem.
A priority at SoftServe is to ensure that all HR functionality remains within the Workday ecosystem, and according to Oleksovskyy, Workday Extend ensures this takes place.
“We might want to build a new custom app that fits naturally into our HR technology strategy, but maybe has nothing to do with any existing Workday functionality,” Oleksovskyy says. “In such a case, we can build it in Workday Extend and keep it within our main Workday-based HR system.”
Oleksovskyy is confident that the company has done a great job in digitizing operational business processes, including simplifying the user experience to drive higher uptake by users, which ultimately benefits the business. A second parallel priority is to build new Workday Extend apps that enable the company to do something new—something SoftServe wasn’t able to do before and needs at a particular moment in time.
Above all, the company is determined to build an experience for its people that makes them feel more connected both with each other and with the business. “This is where we are heading with Workday and Workday Extend,” Oleksovskyy says. “Continuously driving an improved emotional connection between employees and the company will improve us as a community and as a business.”
It feels like every person we work with at Workday is a true partner who is really interested in our success. I think that’s the true meaning of partnership.
Orest Oleksovskyy, Workday Solutions Manager
Using a “second brain” to shape an amazing future.
Oleksovskyy is quick to emphasize the company’s excitement about the Workday approach to AI and machine learning (ML). “As a technology services company, we naturally provide our customers with AI and ML services, so we’re always very keen to see how they positively impact our own business too.
“In my view, having AI on your side is like becoming more than one person—having a second brain to which you can outsource some of your work, enabling you to do something in 15 minutes that used to take 8 hours. It doesn’t replace you: you still have to control it, describe what you want it to do, and control the outcome—all the while being faster and more efficient.”
Oleksovskyy is confident that the Workday commitment to AI and ML will continue to deliver significant benefits to the business. “So many of our conversations with Workday are about how they can help SoftServe become a better company in the future,” Oleksovskyy says.
“I can see a future where the Workday enterprise-level solutions we use will be drawing AI and ML to help us drive our business forward through the new insights they bring us, enabling us to make faster, better, more accurate decisions.”