We have built a management systems layer that we use to make decisions. It takes real-time data from all kinds of systems, including HR, finance, and supply chain, and makes it usable. Data by itself isn’t very interesting, but when you can turn it into actionable insights, it’s really interesting.
First, you have to digitize so you can get to the data. The second step is deploying a system to organize the data, and this is where platforms matter. The system needs to make it easy to get to information and must have the flexibility to be continuously improved. Finally, you move into creating actionable insights from the data. It’s a journey, and it takes time. But if you don’t start, that’s a problem.
That’s how we started with Workday—it was the first system we used to get us to real-time data. As a management team, we decided that we needed to digitize and have a single source of truth. We needed an architecture to get at the data. Workday has served as an example for the rest of our company when we moved our health system and supply chain to digital.