WeTransfer was founded to enable people to share large digital files in the simplest way possible, and has since grown into a globally renowned content collaboration and distribution platform. The company now has a workforce of 400, with offices in New York, London, and Paris, and has over 80 million active users every month with global reach extending across 190 countries.
Such success owes much to the simplicity and reliability of its core product as well as the company’s values-driven approach to responsible technology and business. Becoming a Certified B Corporation solidified the company’s track record in meeting the highest standards in balancing profit, planet, and people.
As is the case for many scale-ups, WeTransfer’s growth had led to the introduction of a multitude of SaaS subscriptions across and within different departments. There was only limited scope to integrate and develop such a complex array of architectures leading to inevitable frustrations, inconsistencies, and inefficiencies.
The lack of scalability was a particular concern. It was becoming more and more important to have a single and more flexible system to improve efficiencies and provide genuine support for the company’s continued growth aspirations.
Progressing through the ISO certification process added further impetus to move away from legacy technologies to a more up-to-date and dynamic system, given the security standards applied to API as well as other compliance considerations. After a detailed assessment of potential solutions, the company’s Information Security team was confident that Workday matched their security requirements.
A single system overcomes inefficiencies and inconsistencies.
In WeTransfer’s HR department alone there were at least 7 separate legacy tools covering a wide range of tasks from HRIS to expense management and tracking OKRs. There was no integration between these tools or with payroll or finance. Not surprisingly, this resulted in a great deal of manual input and duplicated efforts as well as sharing potentially sensitive information on shared drives or email.
Workday is a single system that has greatly improved collaboration between different teams and departments. This means that three legacy tools have been replaced, the recruitment platform is now integrated with Workday, and travel tools are on track to follow the integration process. In addition, streamlining the way WeTransfer’s HR department works has also ensured full compliance with ISO security requirements.
Workday ensures we have a single source of truth for everything about our people, eliminating the risk of discrepancies or contradictions while sharing employment related data.
Katia Malashyna-de Jong, Senior Director Enterprise IT, WeTransfer
Workflow collaboration is now instant and seamless.
Many internal processes within any company cannot be completed effectively without the direct involvement of different teams and different areas of the business. There are many examples of this at WeTransfer such as on/off-boarding flows that involve HR, IT, and user experience teams, and reporting on out-of-policy expenses that involve finance, HR, and leadership teams. Collecting data for B-Corporation reporting is another good example.
Workday has enabled WeTransfer to not only simplify such processes, but to also support better collaboration throughout the company. For example, the tracking of all company-owned assets given to employees is now all handled in Workday.
During offboarding processes, employees often buy equipment provided to them by the company. This previously required HR to reach out to the IT team to clarify information and then ask the finance team to advise on the residual value before instructing payroll on the amount to be deducted from the final payroll sheet. It was a clumsy and time-consuming process. But now everyone has access to the tracking module and can see the same data in one place. The process is fully automated with all the relevant details and close departmental collaboration evidenced immediately within a single screenshot.
The expense report system has also been transformed by Workday. In the legacy architecture, the process was three systems away from the HR system. Just producing the data was challenging, but by the time it reached the finance team, everything needed to be reconciled again. With everyone using the same tool, the process is now painless and much faster.
Overcoming familiarity to refresh and improve established processes.
“A major benefit of Workday is that it will develop and evolve in tandem with our business,” says Katia Malashyna-de Jong, WeTransfer’s senior director Enterprise IT. “We knew that the successful launch of the system was not the end of the story, but just the beginning of a new way of working. That’s why we have a dedicated and enthusiastic team that has overseen the deployment. This team is now monitoring where any adjustments may be required to make sure the system is always in line with the needs of the business.”
Importantly, WeTransfer was open to new ways of taking on various business processes as part of the Workday implementation program. This proved to be a very positive exercise and showed not only where further efficiencies could be achieved, but also provided persuasive evidence to support the introduction of new procedures.
Questioning the effectiveness of familiar processes has helped to avoid any risk of complacency or misplaced assumptions and enabled us to use Workday to drive further efficiencies.
Katia Malashyna-de Jong, Senior Director Enterprise IT, WeTransfer