This impacted our ability to manage our global workforce, both new and old colleagues from different backgrounds, with different ways of working and different organizational cultures. It also inhibited the increased business agility and scale advantage that were essential to the newly formed company’s success.

I would like to share how being a part of the Workday ecosystem both as a customer and a partner has helped us to become Tietoevry.

Why Workday – single source of data and enhanced business agility

Above all, we wanted four things. First, we were looking for a single common HR system that would enable us to operate efficiently as one company. Second, we needed common global processes, streamlined and smooth decision-making, workflows and approvals. Third came an effective, Nordic graduate recruitment process. And, of course, we wanted data and insights to be readily available to managers and decision-makers. We have achieved all these goals and more.

Workday had been implemented across the Tieto business in 2017, and as a result, we believed we could build on this foundation to deliver the single source of people information and the rapid implementation required. The team was also confident it could deliver the training to the former EVRY employees in the tight timescales required.

The initial Workday implementation for Tieto was delivered by our own Workday consultants, the same approach was taken for the merger project. The new Tietoevry HR team partnered with Tietoevry´s Workday consultants and formed a combined team to overcome the challenges and finally achieve together the successful implementation for the whole new company.

Implementation delivered in just five months despite COVID-19

Communication during the implementation was complicated by the fact that a part of the workforce was familiar with Workday, while the other part had never seen it. It was as if we were “speaking a different language” and it was important to get the balance right and ensure common understanding for both groups. In addition, the two companies had different histories in their approach to systems. To add to the challenges, the pandemic meant the project had to run fully remotely, requiring a different approach with greater personal attention from those involved. Luckily, Workday´s implementation methodology can be followed fully remotely and having the guidance from experienced Tietoevry Workday consultants gave us the confidence to drive the project at full speed.

Designing the project to fit our needs

Workday´s implementation methodology provided a solid backbone to our project and allowed us to both incorporate EVRY into Workday, and to optimize the processes for the new company. For example, we used the work streams familiar from the standard implementation but adjusted them to support the merger of two companies. To each stream (functional and technical implementation areas) we assigned one stream lead from exTieto and one stream lead from exEVRY. This set up allowed us to make decisions together while having a smooth Workday learning experience for exEVRY HR colleagues.

Special attention was paid to getting the team working together. Project manager Jasmiina Galenius facilitated conversations and organised meetings for common discussions to bring the right people together. This approach helped the co-operation within the team and to make sure everyone was on the same page. To ensure high user adoption, we focused on change management and communication towards the new and the existing Workday users which was successfully accomplished via a program organized by Juuli Rajalahti.

To achieve the very strict timeline, the project team on both the consultancy and HR side had to keep focus and only include items in the scope that were business-critical. All the “nice to have” items had to be strictly kept out of scope and marked as development items to be addressed after go-live.

Despite the challenges and scale, the project was delivered within budget, and the tight five-month implementation schedule was achieved, followed by a period of stabilization to ensure the synergy benefits from optimized technology could be tracked, understood and maximized.

Gaining the support of key stakeholder groups

Overall, Workday has helped the newly merged Tietoevry join forces. Managers have gained effective and streamlined access to their new teams, enabling efficient service and transactions. Other stakeholders such as Finance now receive data from a common source. Common governance and controls have been implemented, for example, approvals and workflows such as job requisition approvals. And having a common system means we are better able to quickly react to the changing environment when needed.

These are some of the key benefits we gained:

• Highly capable and unified global workforce
• Improved support for remote working
• Better business insight across the organization
• Enhanced ability to share data and experience
• New company-wide people processes and best-practice Performance Management

Bringing Tietoevry to life as a single organization

Workday going live across the merged organization was a fundamental step in bringing Tietoevry together as a fully integrated entity. Until that point, the company existed only in principle but with the Workday go-live, it became more operational and concrete.

The go-live represented the first time that people could see in the system where they belonged within the organization, who their team members were and who they were reporting to. Managers likewise could see information about their people, regardless of where the employee originated. Overall, as a result, Tietoevry has a single consolidated view of our employees, our organization, our core people processes, and workflows, these are pivotal in becoming a unified company.

Solution for the future

As Tietoevry is now looking into implementing the new strategy, our HR team will collaborate with several stakeholders across the company to design the reorganization. With the merger, we have a recent experience redesigning our organizational chart in Workday. However, as an agile company, we are looking to improve our tools all the time. Therefore, we are excited to see how Workday´s latest features will support our next reorganization with the new strategy.