Pinnacle reduces data processing time to equip workforce with insights.

As the largest Latina owned and led global workforce solutions firm, Pinnacle Group understands what it takes to advance new business models and continually adapt to change. With more companies relying on extended and non-traditional workforces, Pinnacle could no longer meet its requirements with manual workflows and inflexible applications. Justin Junkel, senior vice president of finance and analytics at Pinnacle Group, says, “Our legacy systems could not handle the increasing transaction volumes. We needed more automation to reduce risk and onboard larger clients.”

One system instead of four.

Pinnacle discovered that Workday provides holistic tools and one intelligent data foundation for meeting its finance, resource management, and HR requirements. After replacing its four siloed financial systems with Workday Financial Management, Pinnacle deployed Workday Human Capital Management as well.

Saves hours of downtime.

Previously, the accounting system was offline for 13 hours each week while processes pulled invoice data from clients’ systems. Today, Workday manages these automated workflows in just two hours, and accountants can still access the system while the processes run.

Quicker invoices, quicker payments.

To support its financial transactions, Pinnacle built automated workflows that integrate its Workday system, clients’ systems, and banks’ systems. As a result, staff no longer have to manually enter receivable and payable transactions because 98% of the data is already in Workday. Automated workflows facilitate invoice approvals and bank settlements, saving time, minimizing errors, and establishing a clear, reportable audit trail. And Pinnacle can continue to adjust automated workflows in Workday to support clients’ new requirements and integrations. Junkel explains, “The ability to process billions of dollars in transactions faster and according to SLAs drives efficiencies—but more importantly, it reduces risk and provides better service to our customers.”

Balanced and closed two days faster.

Now that all Workday users have role-based access to the same real-time data, managers can catch and resolve issues before close. Automated workflows also reduce errors that used to occur from manual processes. And when transaction errors do happen, Workday alerts the appropriate individuals, noting the transaction and the field in question, while continuing to run. “We close the books two days faster with Workday, and people no longer spend days asking questions about numbers,” Junkel says. “Instead, they can focus on what the numbers mean for the business.”

Better resource management strategies.

Having on-demand access to Workday analytics tools improves decision-making. A report that used to take half a day to create for a standing executive meeting now takes 30 minutes. And rather than spending a half hour or more pulling data from different systems, Pinnacle’s staff answer questions in 30 seconds using dashboards. “We’re more agile with Workday because our people can operate and respond at the pace of daily business,” Junkel explains. “Rather than spending 75% of their time on data gathering and 25% on analysis, staff are spending 90% of their time on analysis and 10% on data gathering.”

Less risk and more credibility help fuel growth.

Fast, reliable transaction processing and insights build credibility but clients also want Pinnacle to demonstrate that its services are secure. “Workday is a well-established, cloud-based system that’s managed by a global team and ISO 27001 certified,” concludes Junkel. “When potential clients assessed our ability to handle hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions with our legacy systems, they used to ask a lot of questions. Now when I tell them we’re using Workday, they don't ask me anything else.”