LiveRamp targets growth and expansion with a trustworthy data foundation.

Today, data is king. But how companies collect, aggregate, integrate and use it remains a challenge, especially for those providing consumer products and services. Using data to drive customer experience is critical to business success, but many companies struggle to unify, control and leverage data to engage their customers across the touchpoints that matter most to them. Privacy concerns and regulations can complicate all this further. 

LiveRamp, a global technology company, built a platform that facilitates this while still guarding individual identities and privacy. Demand is high, and they’re growing by double digits a year. However, staying client-focused while maintaining this trajectory can be tough without a good handle on financials and HR. Fortunately, a strong data foundation is key to their growth strategy  too.

Cleaner integrations and carve-outs.

In late 2018, LiveRamp became an independent pure-play public SaaS company after the sale of its services business, Acxiom, an early adopter of Workday financial and HR solutions. “When we sold the Acxiom services business, Workday made the carve-out of our financials and HR data much easier”, says Chris Garber, senior vice president of Finance and Operations at LiveRamp. “We rapidly created Workday instances for both the acquirer and our own use, so we were able to move ahead with limited disruption to our financial or HR operations”, Garber adds. “Thanks to Workday, our divestiture was a clean break, letting us focus more on serving our existing clients and gaining new ones.” Since then, both revenue and headcount at the company have nearly doubled. 

While most of their growth has occurred organically, LiveRamp has made a handful of strategic acquisitions to add new client capabilities. “With Workday, the integration process is much easier by giving us a repeatable model for each acquisition, and has allowed our teams to focus more on accelerating go-to-market growth”, says Garber.

The shift to cloud-native.

Garber sees finance playing an increasingly strategic and transformative role in how technology companies operate. In fact, Garber was part of the core Acxiom team that chose Workday Financial Management before the company became LiveRamp. “We didn’t want to improve our operations incrementally; we had to completely re-architect everything”, Garber says. “That meant taking a fresh start and going to the cloud, which brought us to Workday.”

In evaluating all their options, LiveRamp’s transformation team found big differences between solutions developed specifically for the cloud and those that weren’t. “Our legacy providers offered cloud options, but it was clear to us that they weren’t cloud-native”, Garber adds. “Instead, their solutions were pieced together, resulting in a lot of limitations.” 

Today, LiveRamp counts on Workday for a single source of financial and HR data – all secure and accessible by employees as appropriate given their privilege levels. “Workday helps minimise, if not eliminate, the data reconciliations that bedevil other companies’ finance groups”, Garber says. “Our finance team is an advisory partner to the business, helping to guide and lead it. And our guidance requires good, actionable data that’s accessible, accurate, and all in one place like Workday provides.” 

Garber sees Workday as decentralising many activities in a positive way. “We can give our employees much more autonomy because Workday is accessible wherever they are, whether that’s working in the office, from home, or on the go”, Garber says. “So by engaging from wherever they are, they can better see workflows and associated routings, approvals and notifications. This keeps everything moving much faster and more efficiently, making all of us much more productive.”

Profitable growth.

Looking ahead, Garber sees continued organic growth with possible acquisitions along the way as the company moves toward the billion-dollar revenue mark, now with the added dimension of profitability. “Our focus has always been on driving growth, but now it’s all about sustained, profitable growth”, Garber says.

As Garber sees it, Workday ensures LiveRamp can always grow on a future-proof platform. “Because Workday is cloud-native and delivers constant innovation, we don’t have to worry about outgrowing Workday. This allows us to focus our efforts on growing our business, improving our margins and scaling our processes, effectively evolving our company and organisation faster and with greater agility.”