For more than a century, Advocate Health has been guided by a deep commitment to caring for individuals, families, and communities—a legacy that has made it a leader in health, academics, and community service. Today, it stands as the third-largest nonprofit integrated health system in the United States, formed through the landmark combination of Advocate Aurora Health and Atrium Health.
The merger created a $27 billion enterprise serving nearly six million patients annually across six states, with 69 hospitals and more than 1,000 sites of care. But while the scale positioned Advocate Health to redefine care delivery, it also surfaced challenges. Years of mergers had left behind a web of disparate systems and siloed operations. The resulting complexity created financial and administrative burdens, making it difficult to achieve data accuracy and a unified view across the organization.
Amy Olson, Group Vice President of Business Applications, said the lack of synchronization between core functions was causing confusion. "Every year, we looked at our budget, and finance would say, 'You have 20 FTEs,' and I'd say, 'But my HR system says I have 22 FTEs.' Well, who's right? We had constant struggles about our source of truth and data accuracy."
Advocate Health leaders selected Workday as their platform, drawn to its mobile-first design, user-friendly experience, and ongoing innovation roadmap.
Driving standardization and success.
Advocate Health deployed Workday Financial Management, Human Capital Management, and Supply Chain Management for Healthcare. This has driven standardization and visibility across the multi-state network.
“Workday has allowed us to revisit our business processes, how we look at our financials, how we manage our supplies, our teammates, and bring that together into a unified way for every teammate, every manager for the entire enterprise,” says Olson.
The impact was immediate for both operational efficiency and the teammate experience. The company also added Accounting Center, using it to run financial information to streamline the data conversion process.
Leaders now have one place to find financial data, eliminating the need to look in different systems. Olson says, "By bringing all of our data together, our leaders can find their source of truth for our entire organization.”
For an organization focused on delivering the best health services to patients, finding ways to support staff is paramount. The move to a single platform is driving a positive impact for those frontline workers.
“A nurse manager with a staff of 150 people across three different shifts doesn’t need to remember four different logins anymore,” says Olson. The ease of use with the mobile app allows leaders to complete tasks efficiently while on the go. “With Workday mobile access, there's more time for the important things. For the nurse manager, that's rounding on patients, supporting their bedside staff. It's not sitting in their office working on administrative tasks.
“We chose Workday because its roadmap aligned with our vision for a more modern, intuitive experience,” says Olson. “Even back in 2017 and 2018, we were talking about creating an almost Amazon-like experience for our purchasers, end users, and nurse managers as they sourced supplies.”
At the time, most other ERP providers were still relying on technology and supply chain systems developed a decade or more earlier—focused on maintaining what already worked rather than reimagining the future. “Workday was different,” Olson added. “They could meet us idea for idea, whether it was already in the product or on the near-term roadmap.”
The path forward: AI and seamless growth.
As Advocate continues to grow, Workday helps streamline M&A processes ensuring there are defined ways of working so that services can easily be extended to new entities.
The team is also excited about the future of work by embracing Workday AI. "We know that Workday has done a lot of work making sure that AI use cases are ethical and appropriate. It has done a great job of identifying areas of AI ‘quick wins’ that are included in the platform, which enables us to pursue features that will improve our operational efficiency.”
For Advocate Health, the investment in Workday is clear. “It is our core platform for our future success in the back office, it addresses our growth needs, and also creates a great teammate experience.”
Workday has done a great job of identifying areas of AI quick wins that are included in the tool. It enables us to pursue features that will improve operational efficiency.
Group Vice President of Business Applications