Beyond Go-Live: Loyens & Loeff Empowers Employees Through Kainos Workday Post-Deployment Services.
About Loyens & Loeff
Loyens & Loeff are a leading independent, full-service, law and tax firm in Europe that is uniquely on point. They provide deeply pragmatic excellence that gets clients further and faster towards achieving their ambitions.
Loyens & Loeff combines law and tax in teams of experts who understand better what matters most to clients, and who are invested in their success. They are on point for the most complex challenges and environments, working together to get things done.
Loyens & Loeff is made up of 1500 colleagues across its primary offices in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland, and international offices in New York, Paris and London.
Achieving Global Ambitions Required a New Approach for HR
In its continuous efforts for progress and improvement, Loyens & Loeff chose to invest in a global HCM system to simplify the management of HR and Payroll. With employees spread across multiple countries, the firm had relied on separate legacy HR systems, some of which had been in place for 15 years.
In 2023, Loyens & Loeff implemented Workday HCM and Recruiting to replace its legacy systems. While Workday provided the firm with a single, modern HR system, the firm faced challenges due to the migration approach used by its original implementation partner.
The initial Workday deployment was an IT-led initiative with limited involvement from key HR stakeholders. For instance, country-specific processes and custom fields were migrated from the legacy systems into Workday without standardising them for the new system. As a result, Loyens & Loeff only used about 70% of the processes that Workday could handle.
Marcel Kluiters joined Loyens & Loeff in 2024 as Head of HR Services, Systems, and Analytics and recognised that a new approach was essential.
Workday is the Rolls-Royce of core HCM systems. However, due to the previous migration approach, processes did run smooth but still a lot of work was delivered via E-mail. We needed to optimise the processes and configuration to make it user-friendly for managers, employees and HR
Choosing Kainos: A True Partnership that Delivers on its Promise
Faced with operational challenges from the initial implementation, Loyens & Loeff required a new partner to mature its Workday environment. The firm looked for a partner with Workday expertise and, most importantly, that was willing to build a true partnership with Loyens & Loeff.
"We wanted a partner to think with us, who had in-depth knowledge of our organisation, and could give us advice. After a couple of sessions with potential partners we chose Kainos. It's a global company and their people gave me confidence that they knew what they were talking about. We also received great feedback about Kainos from stakeholders in the Workday eco-system," explained Marcel.
The firm appreciated Kainos’ structured approach to simplify the complexity of the new deployments, through discovery, design, and test sessions along with regular check-ins.
What I like about Kainos is they deliver what they promise. The consultants are thinking with you and are very hands-on and willing to help
Delivering Process Improvements from Hire to Retire
The outcome of the new partnership for Loyens & Loeff has been a transformation of its HR processes. By working with Kainos, the firm has gained process improvements across Workday HCM and Recruiting, from the onboarding of new employees to the offboarding of leavers. Employees are now empowered to use self-service.
Kainos has also delivered new Workday features for Loyens & Loeff, including a full Learning implementation with the delivery of all training sessions and materials.
"Workday Learning is important for us because we want to develop our people. We put a lot of effort into training which is now all maintained in Workday Learning. The system also manages PE points, which are essential for career development as a lawyer," said Marcel.
The streamlining of processes enabled the law and tax firm to complete payroll integrations for the Netherlands and Belgium - helping to simplify the company’s HR systems.
Seamless Transition Through the Kainos AMS Partnership
After the original implementation, Loyens & Loeff had limited support for its Workday environments. It relied on two external contractors for all system changes and improvements. As a result, the HR leadership lacked an overall understanding of planned system improvements or their dependencies.
To overcome this gap, Kainos worked with Loyens & Loeff to create a robust support partnership. Kainos established Application Management Services (AMS), to provide ongoing support across HCM, Recruiting, Learning, and integrations, while the law and tax firm created a 1st-line internal support team.
"My internal team has gained a lot of experience with Workday, but it's good to have the AMS team because there are topics we cannot resolve," said Marcel.
With the Kainos AMS partnership in place, there is now a seamless transition for Workday enhancements. This transformation in support capabilities has allowed the law and tax firm to embed a culture of continuous improvement.
“Before working with Kainos, there was no structure to the system changes. It felt like we were firefighting. Now there are always sessions where the change consultants provide a handover to the AMS team and my team to explain what they did, so we can manage and maintain it," explained Marcel.
Continuous Improvements for the Future
With an optimised Workday environment in place, Loyens & Loeff is now focused on further enhancements to the employee experience. The firm plans to implement Workday Help and Sana to store all the company’s HR policies, as well as an AI agent that answers employees’ questions.
I'm really happy that I found Kainos and that we’re working together as a partnership. Kainos helped us to stabilise and now optimise the system, so employees can really see that the system is going to work for them.
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