Driving Meaningful Change: Big Lessons From Industry Leaders

The past few years have reshaped our lives, communities, and businesses in ways large and small. While waves of unprecedented change challenge us all, we’ve learned that “turtling up” and hitting pause on a digital transformation is not an option. The topsy-turvy pace is only going to accelerate. 

“It’s this pace of change that’s not slowing down—but in fact speeding up—that’s creating this pressure on us to perform and transform,” Workday Chief Strategy Officer Pete Schlampp said at Workday Rising, our marquee customer event. “Smart business leaders are choosing the systems and the applications that they need to stay ahead of this change.”

At the event, industry leaders came together to share insights and ideas for innovation. Many emphasized that the time for meaningful large-scale change is now, as the past few years have disrupted traditional ways of doing business and catalyzed new opportunities. 

We’ve compiled insights from industry sessions at Workday Rising and summarized takeaways from key conversations. While each industry has unique features, common themes emerged in these sessions and fall within five broad areas of opportunity that will make organizations stronger.

1. Collaboration. “IT doesn’t come to the table by itself, it comes to the table with HR, it comes to the table with finance, and we as a group say this is the investment we need to make,” said Todd Carter, CIO and chief digital officer for the city of Baltimore. Collaboration will power future transformation projects, decision-making, and investments, as well as addressing pressing issues such as staff shortages. 

2. Data, data, data. “We’re really focused on getting the right information to decision-makers more quickly, so they can make informed decisions,” said Doug Schosser, chief accounting officer at KeyBank. Each conversation had a hyperfocus on data and how leaders can bring it all together to reveal insights from a single source of truth.

3. Technology transformation. “When we say transformation, most people panic because most people are creatures of habit,” said Miloš Topić, vice president of IT and chief digital officer at Grand Valley State University. “But is it better to be in a little discomfort now than be in a world of pain years from now?” Industry leaders must be transformation experts whose organizations use the right technology to be more agile—rapidly changing their products, services, operations, and processes.

4. Customer experience. “We have a number of first-generation learners, and many times they don’t have the support systems or the institutional knowledge to be able to navigate complex systems,” said Kristen Constant, vice president and CIO at Iowa State. “Whatever we can do to make it easier and simpler for them, the better.” Customers across industries—whether they’re students, citizens, or patients—expect the same seamless digital experience in all facets of their lives. 

5. Employee experience. “Leveraging Workday’s technology will allow us to first get the basics right, which will simplify things for employees and put data at the fingertips of managers,” said Maryjo Charbonnier, Kyndryl CHRO. With a tighter labor market amid the “Great Resignation,” organizations can focus on employee experience to attract and retain talent: to ensure employees are engaged and have access to cutting-edge technology and projects and to improve inclusion and belonging.

In our industry keynotes, Workday executives, customers, and partners delivered insights and methods to navigate change for industries. Below, we’ve summarized the innovative ideas from five of these industries: financial services, healthcare, higher education, public sector, and professional and business services. 

For Higher Education, the Future Starts With Data

To plan for where higher education is going, institutions should first look at the disruption of the past two years. According to Roy Mathew, national practice leader for higher education at Deloitte, the pandemic not only forced colleges to move quickly to continue their missions of learning and community, but also provided the opportunity to break traditional silos and question orthodoxies.   

This sea change will help institutions prepare for future trends, such as catering to the different needs of all learners, meeting the digital expectations of students, and building trust in higher education. One key to preparing for these trends—a hyperfocus on data.  

“It all starts with data,” said Mathew. “It’s about getting the right data into the right hands to make the right decisions at the right time.”

To enable a digital transformation, colleges and universities will also have to lean into change management and transform their systems. “It’s important to digitize and modernize,” said Miloš Topić, vice president of IT and chief digital officer at Grand Valley State University. “One of the things higher ed struggles with is we live at home in a particular [modern] way. And then we come to work and have to make three carbon copies of the same form to go to interoffice mail.” 

Modernizing technology and processes will also help institutions meet students where they are, in terms of both the type of device they prefer to learn on and their education journey. This change will level the playing field. “Reaching all learners is extremely important,” said Kristen Constant, vice president and CIO at Iowa State. 

For Kathy Ulibarri, CEO of the Collaboration for Higher Education Shared Services (CHESS), higher ed transformation will free up institutions to focus on their connection to the local workforce and community.  

“We have to innovate together, work together, and get past the competitive nature of our work,” said Ulibarri.

Patients Are Front and Center in Healthcare of the Future

“The future of health is happening,” said Mark Perlman, managing director of Deloitte, as he welcomed healthcare leaders from across the country to the healthcare industry keynote. Perlman highlighted how challenges exacerbated by the pandemic have catalyzed the evolution of the healthcare industry. Developments in patient-centric care that were dimly on the horizon in 2020 have accelerated by more than a decade, Perlman said, sending a clear message to healthcare industry leaders: The time for transformation is now.

Perlman estimates around 80% of care today is focused on treating sickness rather than preventing it. To reduce costs and improve the clinical experience, it is imperative that healthcare organizations shift toward promoting health. According to Perlman, organizations that leverage cloud-based technologies such as automation and advanced analytics will be better positioned to drive innovation and enhance patient care in the coming years. 

Leaders from Sentara Healthcare and Northeast Georgia Health System joined Perlman onstage to share their journeys on the path to digital acceleration. Stephanie Schnittger, vice president of corporate finance at Sentara, described Sentara’s previous process as a “quilt of systems” that could not operate as “a single source of truth.” 

By consolidating its disparate legacy systems onto the Workday platform, Sentara has already seen a 65% reduction in its item master and is on the path to reducing its 10-day close to six days, freeing up time and resources for more valuable and strategic activities. Northeast Georgia Health System CIO Chris Paravate said that using Workday has increased collaboration between teams such as finance and HR to address pressing issues such as staffing shortages.

While attendees agreed that patients have always been at the center of healthcare, Perlman noted that legacy systems can often hinder clinicians from delivering proactive care. Cloud-based technology ushers in a new era for healthcare organizations, empowering teams with automation to spend less time on administrative tasks and focus on what really matters: their patients. 

Align Leadership to Drive Public Sector Transformation 

During a public sector keynote session, leaders from the city of Baltimore and Accenture discussed how building shared commitment across different departments reduced silos and led to simplified processes, greater transparency, and cost savings. 

Kicking off the session, Ryan Gaetz, managing director at Accenture, said, “No matter how complex an organization, if we apply small, incremental, continuous change over time, we’ll have a far greater impact and lasting change in the organization than a single moment will.”

Faced with a devastating ransomware attack in 2019, the city of Baltimore knew it needed to rebuild its IT infrastructure. In addition to shoring up its systems, the city also wanted to drive consistency across more than 40 agencies that had different approaches, eliminate manual processes and paperwork, and provide greater access to data. Quinton Herbert, chief human capital officer of the city of Baltimore, said, “We had manual timesheets, and vacation leave slips were triplicate carbon paper. We wanted to get away from that. The ransomware attack served as the impetus for us to move forward.”

Finance, HR, and IT leaders shared a commitment to the transformation, and to each other, to drive the effort. Herbert said, “We made it a point very early on that we were all going to be committed to the project. That this was not an IT project, that this was not an HR project, and this was not a finance project. This was a city of Baltimore project.” Discussing their partnership, Todd Carter, CIO and chief digital officer of the city of Baltimore, added, “It allowed us to show top down: ‘This is how we’re going to work. This is how we’re going to make decisions.’”

Now live on both Workday Financial Management and Workday Human Capital Management, the city is seeing results that include eliminating 370,000 pieces of paper each year and saving an estimated $2.5 million in annual IT costs. And with 90% of employees using the system at least weekly and the ability to answer questions in real time that used to take hours or even days, the collaborative approach championed by leadership is paying off.

How Financial Services Companies Can Drive Innovation and Agility

Financial services firms are operating in a challenging environment that requires more agility than ever before, explained Peter Pollini, banking and capital markets leader at PwC, at the financial services industry keynote.  

Pollini believes the pandemic accelerated digital adoption and problem-solving, as many organizations had to quickly become digitally enabled companies. To stay ahead, Pollini said, companies should not “pump the brakes” but continue to invest in their digital transformation and collaborate with people across financial services.  

“What’s made companies successful in the last 10 years is collaboration,” said Pollini. “Get to know people in the industry and trade thoughts and ideas.”

The roles of financial services leaders have also evolved in the past few years. According to Doug Schosser, chief accounting officer at KeyBank, the speed at which people need information has increased. 

During the pandemic, “things were changing so quickly,” said Schosser. “We had to deal with new accounting regulations, and we couldn’t afford to say, ‘I’ll get that answer to you in two days.’ We had to provide the information directly to senior decision-makers in a reliable and quick way.”

A laser focus on timely, accurate information doesn't happen overnight, and change management is becoming a large part of effective financial services leadership. 

According to Steve Zabel, chief financial officer at Unum, replacing legacy systems with Workday was key as it gave his company many new capabilities, the most notable being “the implementation of a foundational general ledger that set the stage for later incorporating accounting center, which is already transforming our accounting processes by eliminating routine work.”

Competition for Customers and Talent Is Increasing in Professional Services 

The quit rate for professional and business services in 2022 is double what it was in 2009—the year with the lowest quit rate for this industry in the last two decades. That stat, highlighted by Indy Bains, vice president of industry and office of the chief financial officer solution marketing at Workday, kick-started the professional services industry keynote.

For people-based industries such as professional services, a tighter labor market may hamper revenue growth. So what can professional services leaders do? Dan Priest, cloud and digital managing partner at PwC, explained that with the intense competition for talent, companies that offer differentiated employee experiences and “cool projects” that are matched with an employee’s skills can set themselves apart. To achieve this, organizations need the right combination of talent, technology, and data.  

“Leveraging Workday’s technology will allow us to first get the basics right, which will simplify things for employees and put data at the fingertips of managers,” said Maryjo Charbonnier, Kyndryl CHRO. “That data will help Kyndryl with decision-making across the organization and more strategically managing its talent.”  

And for successful transformation, collaboration is critical. “We’re bringing HR and finance together with IT to optimize services delivery,” said Joseph Fanutti, chief integration officer at Bill Gosling Outsourcing Corp. To help with this organizational collaboration, Fanutti is focused on “building the right people in the right skill sets to build a championship team.” He explained that this alignment will improve employee experience, which impacts revenue and helps ensure a thriving business in the long term.