Saving time and reducing costs with smart automation in healthcare

PwC drives compliance and efficiency with Workday innovation

What was the challenge?

The healthcare company needed to streamline its financial and supply chain operations by implementing the right controls into Workday. As a recognized Workday industry accelerator partner for healthcare, PwC was well-equipped to help the organization navigate an increasingly complex business and regulatory environment — while quickly implementing and improving Workday’s cloud solutions. In leveraging Workday’s advanced analytics capabilities, both the PwC and client teams also aimed to enhance strategic, data-driven decision-making and financial planning to more effectively address strategic risks.

The client’s leadership and internal audit teams collaborated with PwC to pinpoint potential risks within their Workday setup. PwC then helped craft customizable rules tailored to the organization’s specific needs, which enhanced compliance by implementing preventative measures like establishing strict access controls and developing thorough audit trails and compliance frameworks. This collaboration boosted effectiveness through advanced automation and created a scalable control environment with enhanced governance. Simultaneously, it modernized IT systems and processes to better meet today’s business needs.

Describe the solution delivered by the PwC community of solvers.

Rolling out better approval processes was a cornerstone of this collaborative effort. The PwC team focused on enhancing compliance by assessing risks and recommending ways to help reduce them, such as fixing segregation of duties violations. These happen when one person has conflicting responsibilities, increasing the risk of errors and weakening an organization’s internal controls. Workday, however, helps mitigate this by establishing better automated approval processes and stringent assessments.

The PwC team also developed additional controls in Workday to prevent, detect and monitor high-risk actions like processing supplier invoices and adjusting asset values. Automating these processes further increased across-the-board effectiveness and saved costs. The result: improved visibility and confidence in the reliability of financial data.

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

Leveraging its vast Workday experience, PwC helped the client streamline processes, reduce repetitive tasks and improve approvals and record-keeping by tailoring a plan that increased Workday’s benefits.

PwC also developed thorough controls process documentation, which was instrumental in helping the client navigate a large-scale technology transformation. These operational guides helped empower the team to react in real time. This means that the business can maintain a stable, sustainable controls environment even as resources are reallocated, the organization undergoes growth or personnel changes or must react quickly to evolving regulations.

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

Controls and compliance often seem burdensome, but PwC helped change that perception. By embedding a compliance-by-design mindset into the healthcare organization’s system development, the team was able to break down barriers and streamline operations. Through collaborative discussions, they built a compliant-by-design Workday platform that helped enable efficient control design decisions.

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