McMillan Shakespeare Limited gains workforce agility during COVID-19.

McMillan Shakespeare Limited (MMS) is Australia’s largest provider of salary packaging and novated leasing services and a leading provider of fleet and asset management, and consumer and fleet financing. A decade of rapid expansion and diversification via acquisition meant MMS was operating its businesses using spreadsheets and a legacy payroll system. Manual processes led to work being double and triple handled. MMS lacked a single source of truth of data and found it difficult to respond quickly to the dynamic business needs. The company needed better data and more agility to give its internal clients exceptional service and achieve compliance in the different markets where it was operating.

Why Workday.

MMS saw Workday as an appropriate fit from a range of perspectives. As a subscription service, the platform wouldn’t place pressure on the company’s already stretched IT team. As a cloud-based platform, Workday offered the flexibility for MMS people to access it anywhere, anytime — and intuitive tools to support self-service. “We also saw it would build the skill sets and capabilities within the HR team to make our work processes better suited and nimble to our requirements,” says Suzanne Shepherd, Group Executive, Human Resources. 

Workday would also dovetail with MMS’ other systems, enabling the entire employee lifecycle to be integrated into learning, finance, and IT systems. “We were excited about the potential to be able to more effectively and efficiently manage reporting between IT and finance to support the financials of our business, offering a single source of the truth as it relates to our employee base,” says Suzanne.

Huge time savings. 

Before Workday, all of MMS’ forms and processes were manual via spreadsheets, Word documents, and emails. After going live, automation allowed leaders to execute employee processes — hiring, ongoing career opportunities, managing time, performance, absence, and separation — in a fraction of the time. 

“One of the other big benefits of Workday was the ability to make corrections and updates and to change things ourselves,” says Belinda Marshall-Clayton, Head of Reward, Policy & HRIS. “Previously, we had to email everything directly to the Payroll department for them to update or correct anything. We saved a lot of time for both the business and the Payroll team.”

Rapid return on investment. 

For Suzanne, Workday’s long-term payback was that it would allow MMS to continue to expand a very complex business without growing headcount. But the system paid for itself long before that strategic benefit kicked in. “Within the second year of going live, we actually saved $600,000 for the business as a result of the automation and the processes implemented,” she says. 

“One of the first and wonderful areas of saving was in recruitment costs. The efficiencies Workday brought us meant I could use my talent acquisition expertise in-house in a far more intelligent, value-creative way. We now have a very limited reliance on agencies.“

Rich and timely reporting. 

The fact that HR can now meet the data needs of the business in terms of compliance, financial reporting, and labor modeling has had a significant impact. This enhanced ability also proved critical in MMS’ COVID-19 response. “What we’re currently going through has demonstrated why Workday is such a good product,” says Belinda. “When the pandemic hit, we didn’t just know what state people were in, but in what office and on what floor. Now we’re using Workday to track whether people are standing down or taking annual leave, which is critical to our FTE reporting.”