BNB has quickly grown to a medium-sized enterprise since its foundation in 2003. It is now a leading technology consulting services organization with operating subsidiaries in Argentina, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK. However, growing demand for BNB’s solutions affected its ability to stay agile, make effective decisions, and deliver a rewarding customer experience.
As BNB grew and moved into new geographies, the company’s disconnected finance and HR systems made it increasingly difficult to monitor business performance, engage with the growing workforce, and change at the speed demanded by clients.
The catalyst for change.
The need to transform the way projects were managed was the biggest driver for change. Faced with an increasing number of client engagements and professional services consultants, BNB needed a more accurate and informative view into areas such as project and resource management, time and expense tracking, and analytics.
Javier Delgado, managing partner at BNB, shares, “We were relying on separate, manual systems to monitor client-facing, billable engagements, and there was very little operational visibility into each engagement. It was sometimes difficult to allocate resources to a client project or to understand the margin on a project, and any forecasting was done manually—with potential errors creeping in. If there was a dispute over the number of hours a consultant had worked on an engagement, for example, we had no means of validating that time and the inevitable consequence was a loss of revenue.”
It didn’t stop there. Financial and workforce planning was also conducted manually using spreadsheets. For reporting, significant time and resources were required to gather the data from different systems. As well, questions regarding data quality meant that budgeting, planning, and forecasting were often delayed.
“There’s no room for complacency in today’s fast-paced business climate,” says Delgado. “To continue our upward curve for growth, we needed to innovate using modern cloud services to transform our business, become more agile, and maintain our quality of client service. A single system for financial management, HR, and professional services automation would address all of this.”
A single system for finance and HR.
BNB reviewed Workday alongside other solutions and quickly concluded that Workday offered the vision, features, and flexibility the company needed. “When we saw Workday we were blown away. Their single system for finance and HR gives us complete visibility into the business,” shares Delgado. “We can engage with all our employees—wherever they are in the world and through whichever device they are using. And the system adapts quickly to whatever changes we might see around the corner. It’s a game-changer.”
And, says Delgado, “The BNB CEO and the board were completely behind the decision to use Workday and wanted it live as quickly as possible.” Once the decision was made, the team worked hard to deploy Workday Financial Management, Workday Human Capital Management (HCM), and Workday Professional Services Automation (PSA) within only a few months. Delgado adds, “The project went well and we only spent a quarter of the budget allocated to the Workday rollout. It was all very straightforward.”
BNB is already realizing the benefits of a single system for finance and HR. For example, its HR professionals have workforce planning and talent management working together in one system, giving them complete visibility into the BNB workforce. By putting people at the core of the company, BNB can better recruit, nurture, and train employees. And those same employees benefit from an intuitive and engaging user experience accessible through their preferred device.
Faster, more accurate financial decision-making.
Workday Financial Management—part of a single system with Workday HCM—provides BNB with transactions, accounting, and analytics all in the same place. Now senior management can make faster, more informed decisions based on one complete view of the business. “It’s already changing the way we operate,” says Delgado. “In particular, drill-down insight into real-time transactions, account statements, and other financial analytics means our decision-making is faster and more accurate.”
Workday PSA has also made a big impact on the company’s client-facing billable projects. All activity is now tracked against projects, speeding up time entry and expense reimbursement. Additionally, BNB has the insight to forecast resource demand, optimizing resource utilization and profitable project delivery.
“Project profit margin is vital, but we didn’t have these sort of analytics before. Now, thanks to Workday, we can see the precise amount of margin and make business decisions based on this information,” says Delgado. “If the margin drops below a certain threshold, for instance, the project manager is informed and can take appropriate action. In this regard, there’s no doubt Workday is helping to increase BNB’s profitability.”
And the rest of BNB’s employees are just as enthusiastic about Workday as Delgado. Employees now have a greater degree of autonomy and responsibility, while managers feel more empowered. The executive team is particularly satisfied, enjoying the instant reporting capability and mobile functionality. “There’s a great degree of satisfaction about Workday here at BNB,” he says, “and we look forward to continuing to enjoy the benefits of Workday in the future.”