Before its full-platform Workday deployment in 2019, UPP’s fragmented landscape included multiple systems across HR and finance. As the company’s Head of Finance Systems Fozia Ahmad notes, “This made any integration between the two functions clunky and hard to manage.”
The landscape changed quickly when UPP made the move to Workday, with the decision partly driven by the Workday commitment to enabling continuous improvement. But Ahmad’s colleague, HR Systems Manager Karen Gray, explains that some initial challenges remained. “We had a very rapid implementation process, following which we felt we were not straightaway in the best position to learn enough about getting the most from Workday.”
Riding the fast track to self-sufficiency.
“We initially hired a third-party AMS provider on an hours-based contract to support our team with technical knowledge, but this approach didn’t work for us,” Gray says. “Not only were Fozia and I both running very small teams in fire-fighting mode, at that time we also didn’t know what we didn’t know. That meant we couldn’t identify what specific help we needed, meaning that the contracted hours were often used on areas that didn’t add value to our activities.”
All this changed when UPP chose to subscribe to Workday Success Plans (WSP), subscription-based plans that provide expertise, support, and education to maximize the success of a customer’s Workday investment and strengthen its Workday competency. “It’s a fast track to the self-sufficiency and flexibility we need to achieve the success we’re looking for: having happy users who feel they’re getting great support from their finance team,” Ahmad says.
It’s a fast track to the self-sufficiency we need to achieve the success we’re looking for: happy users who feel they’re getting great support from their finance team.
Head of Finance Systems
Empowering HR to adapt to constant change.
As Gray explains, “We’ve radically improved our skills and knowledge as a small HR team to make us ever more confident in using Workday. Receiving personalised, one-to-one guidance directly from Workday consultants is so much better than using the AMS route.”
By drawing on services within WSP, Gray’s team has continued to improve their knowledge, understanding, and confidence. “With Ask-an-Expert, for example, we get one-to-one guidance on configuration and adoption,” Gray says. “Learn-On-Demand, meanwhile, uses short, job-specific videos and job aids to tell us everything we need to know the moment we need it—it’s also great for bringing new people up to speed. And we use Accelerator Webinars, both live and on demand, to continuously grow our expertise, boost confidence, and understand feature adoption.”
Thanks to Ask-an-Expert, WSP is helping the HR team to adapt to constant change by navigating complex new areas of legislation. “Recent changes we’ve had to respond to include those in the complex area of absence management, following the introduction of entirely new rules around leave for carers, and two changes to paternity leave,” Gray says. “We simply used Ask-an-Expert to find and implement everything we needed, quickly, easily, and effectively.”
The HR team is also using the Feature Adoption Assessment and Feature Adoption Workshop to identify Workday features to adopt to solve business challenges. “Just as one example, until recently, we were using a manual, off-system form to be filled in by anybody arranging flexible work arrangements,” Gray says. “The workshop identified a feature we hadn’t adopted, which is now operational, and already saving us significant amounts of time and effort—as are many other solutions we’ve found in this way.”
What’s more, UPP recently completed its first Optimization Package—a functional review into its recruiting module with the goal of improving the candidate and hiring manager experience. “This review helped us to pinpoint specific features that would enhance processes and elevate our user experience,” Gray says. “Through a structured and efficient approach, Workday helped us to build an action plan with 44 areas of improvement.” By leveraging expert knowledge and a focused approach, UPP identified a clear path to optimize its Workday investment and drive greater value.
“The best possible advice from the best possible source.”
Fozia Ahmad is equally positive about the finance team’s experience of Workday Success Plans. Ahmad says, “Along with all the reporting and visibility benefits of having finance and HR on one platform, we’re getting the best possible advice on Workday from the best possible source—their own experts.”
This, Ahmad believes, is directly making the finance team more self-sufficient. “By sharing their expertise directly with us, they are helping us solve business challenges for ourselves. That’s a very different model from working with an AMS provider, who did not always provide the knowledge transfer we were looking for. This way, we hold all that knowledge in-house.”
Finance is an area in a constant state of flux, and the UPP team uses Ask-an-Expert and Accelerator Webinars to adapt quickly and seamlessly to regulatory change in a range of complex areas associated with tax and banking, from mileage rates to Know-Your-Customer regulations.
And, in an advance that typifies the value of the Feature Adoption Assessment, the finance team has adopted the innovative Workday AI solution for optical character recognition to scan and populate appropriate fields in supplier invoices. “We’ve automated a hugely manual process before which is saving our Accounts Payable team a lot of time and effort, while eradicating errors,” Ahmad says. “As a result, this team has been able to drive significant cost efficiencies while focusing their efforts on more strategic tasks, enabling them to deliver greater value to the organisation.”
We now have a personalized adoption-planning service in Workday, enabling us to embrace and implement any feature we want from any previous release.
Head of Finance Systems
What’s more, directly from the Feature Adoption Workshop and enabled by Ask-an-Expert, the UPP finance team has used Workday Success Plans to implement a host-to-host banking integration, delivering significant operational efficiencies and financial savings, automating and simplifying banking processes while reducing manual intervention. “The successful implementation of our host-to-host banking integration has not only simplified our payment processes but has also positioned us to achieve substantial annual savings,” Ahmad says. “This milestone demonstrates our drive for efficiency and underscores the financial benefits of strategic digital transformation.”
Happy teams, continuous updates, amazing value.
What makes Ahmad happier than anything else associated with the adoption of Workday Success Plans is the positive impact it’s having on UPP’s people. “They’re here and they’re happy,” Ahmad says. “Our retention rate these days is fantastic.”
Gray, meanwhile, is delighted by the way in which Workday Success Plans continue to keep HR up to speed with the new features being regularly released with the live Feature Release Reviews. “In the past, we didn’t necessarily get to hear about new releases—now we are continuously up to speed with what is possible, so we’re able to be proactive and continually keep pace with innovation.”
As Gray concludes, “All in all, Workday Success Plans have brought us amazing value, particularly from the direct access we now get to Workday consultants: the service you get is brilliant, and I’d encourage anybody to consider WSP.”
Ahmad agrees: “It’s proven that we didn’t need an AMS partner to do our Workday configuration and BAU maintenance. We needed somebody who could share their expertise and give us the guidance we needed to do it ourselves. We really wanted to hold the knowledge in our own company, and now we’re really benefiting from doing so.”