When Amsterdam-headquartered Takeaway.com merged with the London-based Just Eat company in 2020 to form multinational online food delivery marketplace Just Eat Takeaway.com, a vast integration of assets, cultures, and systems was set in motion.
According to Director of Finance Systems Patrick Hawker, the merging organization had a major advantage that over the years has helped to streamline and rationalize the two companies’ unification. “The Takeaway.com parent had implemented Workday as long ago as 2018,” Hawker says. “So when we merged companies, we merged systems as well—including the rollout of Workday Financials for the entire Just Eat Takeaway.com group.”
A single set of data, a single set of processes.
At the time of the merger, Just Eat had around 5,000 employees, while Takeaway.com had 4,000. “We quickly decided to move to Workday as a single ERP and HR system,” Hawker says. “That’s enabled us to build a single source of data and a single set of processes that we can scale out as needed.” Hawker continues, “For me, that’s incredibly important, knowing that stakeholders from our operations across our four segments (Northern Europe, Southern Europe and Australia, North America, and UK and Ireland) just need to go to the one system to get the answers they’re looking for. That’s always been the goal.”
Today, in addition to using Workday from an ERP perspective, Just Eat Takeaway.com relies on Workday for forecasting, planning, and closing consolidation, as well as for managing the master data environment. The role of Workday doesn’t end there. “We’re on the journey to achieving a lot of efficiencies,” Hawker says. “But we also need to change the culture, and that’s what we’re now leveraging the system to do for us.”
Moving to Workday as a single finance and HR system enabled us to build a single source of data and a set of processes that we can scale out as needed.
Director of Finance Systems
Workday at the heart of transition to a new operating model.
Progress is an ongoing feature of life at Just Eat Takeaway.com. Hawker explains, “Workday has already enabled us to connect with all of our different stakeholders around the company—whether they’re from HR, finance, product and tech, sales, or marketing, Workday gives us all a single language for our finance and HR data.”
This is not to say that all challenges have been successfully and permanently overcome. “Aligning all stakeholders in a company of our scale is always going to be a tough piece of work,” Hawker says. “Ultimately, that takes total transparency, allied with a great deal of collaboration.”
That’s how Just Eat Takeaway.com is currently addressing its single biggest challenge— the need to transition from a decentralized operating model to a centralized one, empowered by Workday at its heart. “Doing so requires great focus on best practice and getting your stakeholders to really embrace the change,” Hawker says. “So we spend a lot of time with our people, explaining why it’s so important that we collectively do this piece of work.”
The role of Workday as a key element of the company’s effort is essential. “It means we can empower people throughout the organization by leveraging the toolsets Workday brings them,” Hawker says. “A great example of this is Workday Worksheets—creating an easy-to-use and refreshable data source, all within a single application, not only gives users an easy way to consume data. It also gives me the security I need that data is never going to be lost or moved out of the company,” Hawker adds. “Another is the flexible e-invoicing platform we’ve built on Workday, which means we can react in future to changing rules without having to reengineer the entire system.”
Adapting to new shareholder expectations.
Change continues apace at Just Eat Takeaway.com now that the company is on the road to profitability.
Hawker comments, “As a business our integrations mean big transformation, involving major rollouts that we’ve mainly managed internally—quite a success story, but also a great deal of hard work. And now we’re making the transition from a company that’s focused on growth to one that’s focused on profitability. That’s been difficult for the finance organization, as we’ve had to change the key metrics we were looking at.
“A big part of our strategy now is around efficiency, meaning we need to leverage our data,” Hawker continues. “We also need to be better business partners, meaning we must provide proper insight to the organization rather than just being bookkeepers.”
Workday has been the solid platform on which Just Eat Takeaway.com has built its response to all these challenges. “It’s given us the solid foundation on which we can be really secure,” Hawker says. “We know that Workday is safe, and we properly understand everything that happens with it, meaning we can build everything we need on top of that.”
We know that Workday is safe, and we properly understand everything that happens with it, meaning we can build everything we need on top of that.
Director of Finance Systems
A real innovation extending the system’s core capabilities.
Looking back at achievements to date and anticipating the challenges ahead, Hawker believes that building a great team is the most fundamental need when building any system. “One of the biggest advantages we’ve had is that I was lucky enough to recruit some really amazing people along the way, and they’ve really helped to enable and grow our journey,” Hawker says.
Hawker is also quick to acknowledge the central role that Workday has played in progress to date and is especially excited by the key role to be played by Workday Prism Analytics, which Hawker says is currently unique in the industry. “It’s enabling us to extend the Workday core capabilities by generating finance and HR insight from multiple data sources. That’s offering real innovation, and I’m really excited about what we’re doing in this area,” Hawker says.
Hawker is also excited by Workday investments in the ethical use of AI and machine learning and anticipates significant usage of these technologies as essential problem-solving tools. Hawker sees something like the Workday program of events as extremely important, “helping us to connect with partners, with other customers, and with Workday itself.”
But it’s the ability to shape the solution in the way that best matches company culture that means the most to Hawker. “The system is an enabler. It’s there to provide your users with resources based around the culture you’re building. So understand that culture, build your vision to empower it, and use the system to make everything real.”