Fortune 500 Insurance firm gains Workday Advanced Compensation accuracy with Smart Test
Project Requirements
- Implement a reliable, high-quality testing solution designed specifically for Workday
- Reduce reliance on manual testing to save time, effort, and increase accuracy
- Repeatable testing for high-risk calculation scenarios including, proration, participation and scorecard eligibility
Project Results
- 75% reduction in manual testing time
- 3 testing staff now working on higher value activities
- More reliable testing results and greater peace of mind, particularly with advanced compensation calculations
About the company
A well-known, Fortune 500 insurance and financial services organisation based in the US, employing over 25,000 people across the country.
Migrating to Workday calls for greater testing assurance
The organization selected Workday as part of its HR Digital Transformation strategy. Until that point, the business was operating multiple, siloed systems that had become expensive and difficult to keep up to date.
“We made the decision to move to Workday because of its unified ‘Power of One’ approach, and the ability to empower both back-office teams and employees across the organization. With the scheduled automatic updates, we knew that we would be forced to stay up to date with software rather than having to manage that process ourselves when we could afford to do so, both financially and operationally,” explains the IT Application Manager who oversaw the organization’s Workday Implementation.
Smart Test provides update value and more from the start
Seeking a solution to manage Workday’s bi-annual updates more effectively, the business initially chose Smart Test to greatly reduce its dependency on manual testing. Another important factor for was that Smart Test is always up-to-date with Workday.
“Smart Test does all our heavy lifting, on a weekly basis. All we need to do is review the report and analysis, make the fixes and re-run. It gives us the reassurance that everything will run smoothly with the weekly and bi-annual Workday releases in addition to the changes we’re making in the system.”
Advanced Compensation needs sparks a strong partnership with Kainos
One area of Workday testing which became a focus for the organization was Advanced Compensation. The team found that Workday Advanced Compensation was easier than a previous system for maintaining data and configuring calculations, however with more than three years of experience, they had learned the complexity and high risk of these calculations.
Their Director of Compensation Administration confirms , “We are calculating merit increases and bonus payments with complex calculations. It is essential that our configuration is correct and the Workday release changes do not impact our processes. Protecting people and businesses with extraordinary care is our mission and this includes our associates and our business, so it is vital that our calculations be exact. We want to make sure they are not under or overpaid. A miscalculation results in loss of trust within the processes as well as a bad associate experience.”
They continue,“We run multiple cycles annually and we require a month to prepare for the testing. This includes finding all of our test cases and making sure any change in configuration are accounted for in our test cases. To complete all of our test cases, we have three skilled testers who are dedicated to this process. The manual testing effort takes key team members away from their day-to-day responsibilities or other high priority projects that could add value. We have multiple plans and complex rules that are assigned to these plans. Identifying our worker population that meets our test case criteria and the required transactions against them during the process period takes a large amount of time.”
Smart Test ensures faster, cost-effective Advanced Compensation testing
Smart Test has given the Workday team confidence in their compensation review process,confirming all the associated complex calculations and ensuring that any new functionality or workflow changes do not adversely impact the system.
Not only has it enabled the business to cut down on manual testing, saving time and freeing up 3 testing staff per Advanced Compensation cycle, the company now sees a reduction of 75% in testing requirements across the board—significantly reducing the costs associated with testing and allowing these key people to work on high priority activities.
“With Smart Test, we can run our test cases in a matter of hours, and this allows us to know that our eligibility, proration, validation and calculation rules are right, and associates will be paid correctly, and that’s huge for us. Being able to use Smart Test for Advanced Compensation has reduced the manual effort and timeframe for testing.”
A brighter future with Kainos and Smart Test
Reflecting on the testing that Smart Test for Advanced Compsenation has completed to date, Smart Test has uncovered inefficiencies that had been previously overlooked, including proration rules and eligibility rule conflict in their scorecard eligibility rules.
Looking ahead, the company plans to continue to work with Kainos to create efficiencies and develop new functionality. The team is also delighted with the support and access to expertise Kainos provides.
“Smart Test is allowing us to leverage my teams' strengths while also increasing test coverage. It will reduce the amount of time spent working through manual testing of our Advanced Compensation processes and focus on other automation efforts.”
“We have a true partnership with Kainos and we have been able to share ideas. We are excited to see the expansion of Smart Test with Advanced Compensation,” they conclude.