Rapid growth through acquisition meant many separate systems were in use across the company, driving complexity and making it difficult to manage growth and integrate further acquisitions. The need to manage numerous systems prevented HR from focusing on analysis and business partnering. Moreover, it was impossible to meet the business’s appetite for data with the necessary speed and accuracy.
Partnering for a complex, fast-changing business.
Evotec was facing increasing complexity due to rapid organic and acquisition-led growth. Any solution therefore had to help the business keep pace with organisational change while delivering clarity and insight into its fast-expanding workforce. Evotec also needed to reduce pressure on its HR teams through efficiency improvements and automation, while also meeting increased demand for analytics.
Workday’s reputation for helping customers through strategic challenges made it the natural choice for Evotec.
We had high expectations for our new system to be scalable and agile. Workday’s approach made it the right choice for us.
Head of Global HRIS
Systems consolidation empowers human resources.
The greatest value Evotec has gained from Workday is the migration from many legacy systems to a single, global solution.
Previously, HR had relied heavily on IT to adjust and deploy these complex systems. With Workday, HR is greatly more independent of IT, freeing both organisations to focus their attention on strategic projects.
Improved effectiveness and everything in one place meant faster reporting and less manual work. Now all tasks and approvals can be tracked. For example, the time needed for preparation and consolidation in the merit process has decreased from four weeks to 2.5 hours.
Workday also empowers teams to design their own processes and has enhanced data security by replacing the use of Excel files with more modern, reliable and robust solutions.
Above all, Workday provides a single global process for several areas of the business to create true alignment between teams, streamlining activities, cutting timescales and improving relationships.
Reduced administrative onboarding time from 2 months to 2 weeks
Achieved full auditability of approvals on changes
Speed, accuracy, data consistency and aligned processes – we’ve gained them all with Workday.
Head of Global HRIS
Tangible business benefits.
With Workday, Evotec now has system support for processes that were previously manual or Microsoft Excel based. Mobile access has been granted to senior leaders, and 60 per cent of them access Workday regularly on their mobile phones. Managers have less paperwork to handle and fewer Excel files by doing things on the go.
The company has seen major savings of time and money. With one system to maintain original data, transactional work volumes have reduced greatly: for example, head-count reporting times have fallen from around one week to five minutes.
The merit process took weeks, as senior leaders shared spreadsheets to make decisions. This now takes just two or three days. This is particularly important as it delivers major time-savings for senior management.
With Workday Recruiting, their process has also changed dramatically, with streamlined GDPR-compliance and communications with candidates. As a result, recruitment costs have remained flat during a period of increased hiring.
Workday helps HR operate in a far more strategic way, increasing the tangible value we bring to the business.
Head of Global HRIS
Enhanced decision-making.
It has historically been hard to quantify data relating to overtime hours, as only employees had access to tracking spreadsheets. Now, this data is fully auditable.
Evotec has also used Workday to create new absence criteria and systems during COVID-19, enabling the cost impact on the company to be easily calculated. As a result, it has created new practices that benefit employees while reducing risk and expense for the business.
Additionally, having insight into overtime and absence allows Evotec to set alerts around overtime and make decisions based on new visibility. Workday helps to drive faster onboarding and report creation, meaning Evotec can identify the most effective recruiting channels.