KinderCare Learning Companies
Hear from our client, KinderCare Learning Companies, on how their Workday implementation transformed their HR, finance, and payroll processes, providing real-time data access and improving operational efficiency.
Transcript
KinderCare is the largest provider of early childhood education in the nation. Our mission is to instill confidence in those children and to provide a safe space for families to leave their kids.
We made the decision to move to Workday based on a cultural fit. KinderCare is a people-first organization, and Workday felt like they are very much a people-first organization as well. In talking with KPMG about the Workday transformation, we felt like Workday would be the right strategic fit.
KPMG really brought kind of the full force of their firm. So they have expertise in not just the technology, but the people process and technology in each individual work stream. And so working with a KPMG lead that actually knows alternatives or best practices on how to do things, we got their best person, put a KinderCare person, really generated good collaborative work teams in that way. That led to great changes early on in the decision-making, and then it just flows seamlessly into the change management and training downstream for end users.
The mock close process that KPMG planned with us opened our eyes to things like: “What does the procurement team need to do to stay on top of their processes so that the accounting team can close in the most efficient way possible?” “What do some of the other teams need to do to make sure that the data is clean as we're heading into close?” We talked a little bit about real-time data and that mock close process really informed what those tasks needed to be.
KPMG's philosophy throughout the project was preparing KinderCare to own the new technology, the new processes. So, it's really around knowledge transfer, it's really around training and passing ownership to KinderCare.
We've been live now on Workday, both HCM and finance and payroll, for about 3 months. The ease of use of the system, the user interface is incredible. I think the access to data has really been eye-opening for some of the back office folks. Within Workday we're working out of one enterprise system. We have access to real-time data, we're no longer relying on IT integrations overnight, over the weekend. It's more of a real-time access to the data that we need to drive business decisions. We have fairly high turnover in our centers, so the hiring process is constant. Within Workday, we're able to more quickly analyze some of those metrics in the hiring process. Any improvements we can make in hiring teachers, getting that trusted teacher in the classroom more quickly, more efficiently is game-changing for KinderCare.
The bench strength that KPMG brought to the table really kept the project on time, on target for the Workday transformation.
