Case Study: Macquarie University implements human capital management system

Macquarie University has consolidated multiple systems into one human capital management (HCM) system with Workday and Accenture.

Digital Nation Australia spoke to Nicole Gower, vice president of professional services at Macquarie University who said that the organisation did not previously have a strong integration of data into their decision-making process.

“We had a payroll system, we had a recruitment and talent management system, we had many time keeping systems, we had a learning management system. And when you added them up, they didn't equal a human capital management system. So there was overlap, but there was also significant gaps in terms of what we previously had,” said Gower.

According to Gower the organisation was looking to improve employee experience through a more user-friendly interface.

The university chose Workday and Accenture as technology and implementation partners due to a shared ambition and values, she said.

“When we selected Workday, and Accenture as our implementation partner, we actually spent a lot of time with them before the project even began to ensure that we had that really strong alignment, importantly, around that ambition and what we wanted to achieve, but also how we wanted to achieve it,” said Gower.

“We saw success in that technology space as really needing a very close partnership every single day. And with any kind of big technology transformation, you're going to have good days and there's going to be really challenging days. And so that partnership has got to serve you through the good days and the bad days.”

A year after the implementation, the organisation has been able to remove a paper trail and streamline workflows she said.

“There’s lots of forms that have now disappeared. People are working very much through those workflows that you'd expect to see. One of the things that our staff love is that Workday you can use on your phone. And so, simple things like that, having that really easy user interface, things like an organisation chart that's live and dynamic. If you want to see where someone fits in or how to connect with people, anyone in the organisation can get that on their screen and at any point in time. So that's gone really smoothly.”

Macquarie University’s approach since implementing the solution was to recognise that the work didn’t stop after launch day she said.

“Implementation did not stop on day one of go-live. We actually wanted to continue to iterate, continue to evolve how we were using Workday,” said Gower

“We're still continuing to work through how do we make better use of the capability in Workday? How do we continue to evolve our capability?”