How Workday can improve supply chain management: PwC

PwC’s community of solvers are human-led and tech-powered

One of the largest health systems in the United States — with over 80,000 employees and more than 500 sites — worked with PwC to standardize its disparate back-office systems and migrate its finance, human resources and supply chain functions onto a single Workday platform.

What was the challenge?

The organization recently merged with another large health system, and one of its strategic initiatives was to standardize its business operations and back office systems on Workday. Based on its size and scale, this was one of the largest such deployments to date. The organization needed to rapidly prepare and train its staff and third parties to support multiple go-lives. This required a disciplined upskilling and training program supported by world-class tools that could handle the size and scale of the implementation.

Describe the solution delivered by PwC’s community of solvers

The organization deployed a Workday system that simplified and automated business operations while helping it prepare for the future. One of the largest areas of focus was supply chain, where PwC’s day-in-the-life boot camp program helped solve actual supply chain business problems — and move away from conventional, transaction-focused training. In just four weeks, PwC rapidly scaled its team to more than 100 professionals who worked collaboratively with the client to launch Workday across hundreds of sites.

How does the solution blend the strengths of technology and people?

The organization implemented Workday in a fast, simple way — supporting up to 15 hospitals at a time during the initial roll out. PwC’s proprietary training program and tools automated processes that previously felt too overwhelming for the organization to tackle. The program rapidly trained employees to learn a new system, adopt new ways of working and stabilize operations in half the time it typically takes for the average healthcare organization.

Where or how did innovation and unexpected ways of thinking come into play?

For the Workday launch to be successful, the organization needed to think big and act with strategic precision. PwC used its out-of-the-box solutions and experience with large-scale change initiatives to support thousands of end users across the business during multiple rollouts. The approach — a first in the industry to standardize hundreds of sites in a rapid timeframe — resulted in overwhelmingly positive feedback from the learning participants and allowed the business to close the command center earlier than planned.