Hundreds of the world’s leading enterprises rely on DataStax to deliver smart, high-growth AI applications. At the forefront of the Gen AI revolution, DataStax equips businesses to use real-time data to build AI applications quickly at unlimited scale on any cloud.
A big part of the company’s growth in recent years comes from mergers and acquisitions. Foreign businesses accounted for four out of five recent acquisitions, posing challenges such as integrating complex legal, tax, and regulatory environments and disparate IT systems.
Arnulfo Sanchez, chief accounting officer at DataStax, says the company addressed those challenges with the Workday platform that includes Workday Illuminate™, the next generation of Workday AI. “We set up books from those acquisitions easily in Workday, where we’ve got foreign currency enabled and the ability to report transactions,” Sanchez says. “It was seamless.”
DataStax has also driven employee engagement, improved operational efficiency, and mapped out ambitious revenue growth goals with the Workday platform.
Increased transparency boosts teamwork.
Sanchez says Workday fosters collaboration across various departments. “It enables more teamwork because everything from the onboarding stage to getting checks out to employees is visible,” Sanchez says.
Employees also handle routine tasks on their own, such as checking pay stubs, managing budgets, opening requisitions, and approving purchase orders using the Workday platform self-service capabilities. “Our employees enjoy the seamless UI aspect of Workday, which is intuitive and helps them perform tasks faster,” Sanchez says.
Managers can now generate their reports, not only saving their time but their colleagues’ time as well. “If I have questions or want to do my analysis, I don’t have to ask HR or FP&A for help,” Sanchez says. “It’s all right here.”
Employees enjoy the intuitive UI capabilities of Workday, whether it’s for checking pay stubs or approving purchase orders
Chief Accounting Officer
Improved operational efficiency.
DataStax managers quickly generate reports or presentations for planning purposes or other needs with automation capabilities that are part of Workday. “Once you close the books, you’re quickly able to complete the remaining deliverables, like our presentation for the board of directors,” Sanchez said. “We’ve created numerous reports that automatically populate into our board presentations with a click of a button.”
Sanchez adds that managers can update reports on the fly. “Our ability to change the reports has been spectacular because we don’t have to spend a lot of time downloading them in spreadsheets and then pasting them into presentations,” Sanchez says. “They automatically upload.”
Managers can also quickly pinpoint where they need to take action. “For workforce planning, it’s identifying weekly budget status,” Sanchez says. “We see if we’re running hot somewhere and need to make tweaks. Or we pinpoint where we’re not spending enough in one area.”
Sanchez adds no longer relying on spreadsheets results in fewer errors and increases transparency. “If someone creates a crazy formula within spreadsheets but leaves the company, you’re left trying to figure out what this means. Using Workday, we don’t have to rely on formulas; you can drill down to see the underlying data and the root cause.”
Our ability to model out scenarios for planning, payroll, financials, and HCM with a click of a button is powerful. I can’t overstate that enough.
Chief Accounting Officer
Prepared for future growth.
Sanchez says the organization’s customers go through three stages of successful growth that can apply to many companies: delegate to reduce costs, accelerate to increase efficiency, and reinvent to leverage AI and other cutting-edge technology to boost profits.
“Successful businesses want to reinvent and use generative AI to improve their profit-and-loss outcomes,” Sanchez says. “We’re no different.”
DataStax also moved forward with Workday Adaptive Planning and away from spreadsheets for forecasting future growth. Employees can build scenarios, create flexible hiring plans, and assess future resource needs with Workday Adaptive Planning. “We've been doing all of our OPEX planning and revenue modeling fairly easily with Workday,” Sanchez says.
Sanchez looks forward to incorporating Workday Illuminate into growth planning and other processes to help accelerate common tasks, deliver real-time help, and streamline standard business processes.
“That will further position us as a leader in the generative AI space,” Sanchez says. “The best is yet to come for us and Workday.”