One of the top 20 CPA and consulting firms in the U.S., Armanino measures its success by how well its clients are doing. That is why the certified B Corp. has enjoyed continued growth over five decades. Fast approaching $1 billion in annual revenue, leaders looked to revamp how the organization manages its clients’ unique and evolving demands.
Armanino decided to deploy Workday Professional Services Automation (PSA), a system designed to give operations leaders timely and valuable insights into upcoming projects, needed skills, talent availability, billing, and project profitability.
That choice followed leaders’ prior decision to use Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) and Workday Financial Management to replace 15 disjointed finance and HR platforms. All applications are now part of a unified system with Workday PSA.
Though the firm is still in the early stages of its Workday PSA deployment, Armanino has seen encouraging results so far, says CFO John Kogan.
Time-based functionality.
The use of Workday PSA comes as Armanino moves toward new industries, flat fees, and other changes needed for a services-based business. “We have a complex mix of clients, so we need something like Workday PSA that accommodates our varied needs and our rapid scaling,” Kogan says.
Kogan expects Workday PSA will give managers valuable insights into flexible billing rules, markups, and write-offs to minimize revenue leakage. Workday PSA supports various billing models including subscription-, usage-, and project-based billing, as well as time and materials, fixed-fee, prepaid, milestone, and percent completed.
Kogan’s also looking forward to performing project-based profitability analysis. “We’re approaching that capability,” Kogan says. “It will be a great function for us to leverage.”
The idea is to provide a unified solution, and Workday PSA accomplishes that mission.
CFO
Cost in a unified system.
With Workday PSA as part of a unified data model, Armanino employees see the same information about revenue and expenses, which helps improve collaboration. “It used to be that you might have two or three different systems to hunt for whatever you were looking for,” Kogan says. “Now everyone’s going to the same place. We’re still learning how to use the new tools, but no doubt this is a win.”
Manage collections in one place.
Armanino expects to use all Workday PSA capabilities, including collections management. Armanino will be able to manage receivables and collections, maintain client accounts, and automate billing all at once.
“We’ve used a separate system for how our collections team manages collections versus how our client-facing folks see them,” Kogan says. “That’s a problem because the two sides aren’t seeing the same thing.” Kogan believes Workday PSA will help address that issue.
Our big ROI from Workday PSA will come from better pricing and billing insights because we can see project profitability.
CFO
Advice for companies interested in Workday PSA.
Kogan’s advice to businesses about using Workday PSA, “Spend as much time up front as possible to understand how the platform will work in your environment. That’s true of every enterprise resource planning implementation I’ve participated in, but it requires a more sustained effort than you might think. Give yourself enough time.”
Kogan adds that deployment can be challenging, so ensure your managers are fully engaged in all phases of the process. “If you’re not as focused during your architecting or discovery phase, you may not be where you want to be when it’s ready to go live,” Kogan says. “There are lots of wonderful upsides to being on the same platform. But it’s going to take a while to get there, so be patient.”