When a technology modernizes business processes, enables integration, and still has room for further improvements to the operations of an organization, then it can claim to be a platform. At Workday Rising 2024, the firm fielded three CIOs who shared their experiences of organization-wide implementations and how this led to modernization, integration, and business process improvement now and into the future.
Retail, healthcare, and hospitality CIOs Greg Zeh, Robin Sodano, and Ryan Schlimpert, respectively, have been at the forefront of modernizing the technology estate and the business processes of their organizations. Schlimpert, CIO with Drury Hotels, told Workday Rising 2024, the first priority was to get the US organization onto a modern technology platform:
And then we really focused on making efficient and easy-to-use processes.
We talk about moving from tasks to value-added work because we don’t want our accountants crunching spreadsheets manually; we want them out looking for cost savings and revenue opportunities.
Drury Hotels adopted Workday in 2019, initially in HR before adding payroll and then finance in 2020.
In retail, CIO of Weis Markets Greg Zeh went through a similar journey, modernizing its technology estate onto Workday during the Covid-19 pandemic in a deal he and his team negotiated with Workday completely remotely via Zoom and Teams calls. The implementation went live in 2023. Zeh says the adoption was well timed as retail changed in the post-pandemic economy. The US retailer’s staff became younger and Weis Markets needed to change its processes.
Store managers would scan the information from a candidate and then send it in, where it would then be printed and manually entered into PeopleSoft.
Expenses reimbursements were a similarly manual process that relied on Excel and took weeks for a staff member to receive their costs back; now, on Workday, he says, they are reimbursed in days.
Robin Sodano at UMass Memorial Health Care, the major healthcare provider in Massachusetts, had the most significant modernization story. She replaced 42 different systems, one of which dated back to 1982 and still used green-screen technology. The history of UMass has led to a broad range of technologies and processes, all of which needed to be rationalized. She says:
The modernization was to get everyone on a single platform and everybody working in the same way.
On the standardization benefits, she says:
A lot of the productivity gains from this was from process improvement, but it is hard to improve processes if everyone is doing something different.
Interoperability
All three CIOs have been able to slim their application estate with a platform approach. No organization however can do everything from one technology. With all three CIOs working towards improving business processes, easy integration was essential. Schlimpert says:
It used to feel that like we were constantly pushing and pulling our systems, there were different upgrade models. Bringing that all together allowed our IT team to shift left and really enhance business processes and drive more value.
Sodano also realized business benefits as she was able to help the healthcare provider manage access to its systems better and understand its staffing more effectively, especially with the use of contingent workers. Integration has led to organizational efficiencies that improve the care given to patients:
We are maximizing our OR (operating rooms) as we know that we have the physicians, nurses, equipment, and supplies available.
Zeh touched on how a platform approach also improves the enterprise architecture. Now the retailer is able to identify what data it has and where the data resides. He says this has improved compliance and reporting as Weis Markets has to meet SOX, credit card data security, and HIPAA pharmaceutical regulations.
Continued journey
Organizations go for a platform approach not only to modernize but to continually improve the way the business operates. At Drury Hotels, CIO Schlimpert says accounts receivable is being centralized and integrated into the sales and property management systems.
Schlimpert has adopted the Workday Peakon staff engagement application. Although some of the feedback is challenging, he says it has positively shaped the culture of his organization:
We ask if technology is helping with your job, and it is a tough one as we get a lot of comments that are not always fun. But it gives us a north star to not only roll out technology but to make sure it is technology people like.
Sodano in healthcare adds:
Part of our culture is process improvement, and we are now revisiting some of our workflows and optimizing the systems.
Zeh finished by revealing how the working model of the retailer has completely changed, with 96% of associates using Workday on their mobile device, and the same approach being used by the COO.
My take
Three stories that demonstrate that the role of the CIO, and the platform they chose to implement, are about so much more than technology; these are stories of organizations working in new and more efficient ways.
Check out diginomica’s dedicated Workday Rising content hub here.
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