In Brief
Consolidation of disparate systems leads to greater efficiencies at scale
- Constrained by an inefficient on-premise technology infrastructure, a healthcare system sought a robust cloud-based platform to scale across its expanding footprint of hospitals and healthcare facilities.
- The organization invested in Workday as its new ERP system, focusing the implementation on enhancing the employee experience, creating custom technology solutions, and empowering users to define and sustain the new system.
- The transformation led to greater efficiencies at scale, improved employee satisfaction, eliminated supply chain hurdles, and standardized procedures.
Challenge: Streamlining systems to drive efficiency and growth
A nonprofit healthcare system rapidly expanding through organic growth and acquisitions sought a secure and scalable cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform to replace its disparate, on-premise technology systems and transform core business processes.
The organization’s leadership invested in Workday to streamline its human resources, payroll, supply chain, and finance functions. Recognizing the importance of a high-quality implementation strategy to drive efficiency and growth, the healthcare system engaged Huron to assist with the transition and rollout.
Today, the organization can roll out the ERP system to a new facility within three to six months.”
Approach: Putting employees first
Drawing on Huron’s industry recognition as an ERP implementation leader, the teams worked collaboratively to integrate Workday within the organization’s technology ecosystem using leading practices to create a sustainable and scalable system.
Key project goals and actions included:
Standardizing and improving processes. With multiple hospitals operating differently, the team developed standard processes and procedures to improve efficiencies and simplify business operations across the organization. This work included standardizing approvals for spend transactions to create tighter financial controls.
As the healthcare system expands its hospital network, standardized processes and procedures have provided the foundation to scale the ERP system efficiently.
Today, the organization can roll out the system to a new facility within three to six months.
Focusing on the employee experience. A premium was placed on developing solutions to improve employee satisfaction by making it easier for them to do their jobs and access benefits and payroll data. Mobile capability was fast-tracked for all new modules to provide greater functionality for staff. Days and hours were also shaved off key processes, leading to increased efficiency.
Creating custom technology solutions. The healthcare system eliminated a significant supply chain hurdle by co-inventing a custom bill-only solution for surgical supplies. Instead of the healthcare system’s employees initiating a purchase, the new solution prompts the supplier to handle the bulk of data entry in Workday while continuing to provide visibility and approval to procurement.
Empowering users to define and sustain the transformation. To support the transformation and team buy-in to process changes, leaders participated in monthly seminars to learn leading practices for standardizing procedures and communicating the why behind the transformation. This collaboration, coupled with hands-on training, prepared the healthcare system to sustain the changes on its own post-implementation.
Solving unexpected challenges. Throughout the process, staffing and technology stack issues unrelated to Workday threatened to derail progress. Committed to seeing the implementation succeed, Huron worked beyond scope alongside the organization’s employees to ensure key milestones were met, including putting labels on supply chain racks and counting inventory.