Kainos & Workday Drive Financial Transformation and Scalable Growth with Teranet

About Teranet

Teranet, headquartered in Ontario, Canada is an international leader and pioneer in electronic land registration systems and commerce. Teranet developed, owns and operates the Ontario Electronic Land Registration System – one of the most advanced, secure and sophisticated land registration systems in the world.

Powerful Technology and Consultants Who Care

With their legacy financial system due for retirement, Teranet needed a powerful financial system and the right team for the implementation. Live on Workday HCM in 2016, Teranet understood the business value Workday delivers and were keen to explore Workday Financial Management when they began selection in 2018.

From the beginning, Teranet defined the project as a new system, rather than an upgrade. This gave them the freedom to give equal weight to Workday versus their previous vendor, and to take a fresh look at partners. Requirements for the new system included:

• Synchronization between systems: Previous systems were fragmented and required manual reconciliation which was costly and time-consuming.
• Scalability: Ability to scale with the company. Implications were both for the software and the configuration: they didn’t want custom configurations that would be difficult to maintain as they grow.
• Reporting and accountability: Capability for comparison of the planning versus actual activities, particularly in personnel costs, which account for 80% of the company’s costs.
• Ease of use: The system needed to be easy to use and intuitive so that the efficiencies of self service could be maximized.

In addition, Teranet’s growth strategy includes both organic growth and merger & acquisition activities.  The legacy systems made it expensive and cumbersome to onboard new companies and integrate financial processes. As a result, several acquired companies were using separate finance systems, making reporting, forecasting, and management extremely difficult. 

Trevor Appleton, Senior Director of Finance & Corporate Controller at Teranet describes, “Every time we acquired a business and needed to add a new legal entity, we had to bring in consultants. For a big project it took about three months and for very small companies which should have been simple – it proved to be quite complicated. Adding new entities to the system was expensive and costly so we ended up not integrating them properly, we just kept on bolting things on to the side. As we got bigger and did that more, it became more and more of a drag on our business, having these different financial systems.”

From a partnership perspective, Teranet had a clear vision of what they wanted in a deployment partner: they weren’t interested in working with the large vendors and system integrators they’d used in the past. Instead, Teranet sought a partner who would be dedicated to their needs and bring deep financials experience in the Medium Enterprise space. Moreover, they wanted a partner who takes a consultative approach to truly transform its operations rather than simply following instructions.

“It wasn’t part of the formal requirements, but obviously we wanted to work with a vendor who really cared about ensuring a successful final product. Kainos showed dedication during the selection process that gave us confidence they’d have that same level of devotion throughout the implementation,” says Mike Sims, Director of Accounting at Teranet.

Working with Kainos to Deliver Workday

In 2020, Teranet chose to partner with Kainos to deploy Workday Financials, as well as guide and consult on process best practices. Teranet approached the deployment with a proposed system definition based on their legacy platform, but with an open mind to avoid being restricted by how they had always done things in the past. The partnership with Kainos involved in-depth research and discussion, allowing the Teranet team to leverage the full capabilities of the Workday platform rather than trying to retrofit old processes onto a new system. The result was a streamlined system built on standardized processes that Teranet can scale out as they grow and acquire new companies and benefit from the on-going improvements to Workday. 

“The first meeting with Kainos was really, really powerful. Kainos was very straightforward in saying this is how Workday works, this is how you optimize it, don't do what you want to do, do it the right way. That was what we wanted. We wanted best practices,” remarks Trevor.

Dedication to Deadlines: Whatever It Takes

“One of the benefits of working with Kainos was their willingness to take full responsibility for delivery and deadlines, even in cases where they could justifiably say that it was beyond their responsibility. For example, during the project one of our staff members became ill and was unable to deliver on time. Kainos stepped in with one of their staff members to cover the gap so that the project could continue on time,” explains Mike.

Throughout the project, whenever there was any unexpected obstacle, or a change that was outside of the scope of the project, Kainos stepped up to ensure that Teranet received the solution they wanted.

Mike continues “Kainos went above and beyond to make sure we got the product that we had envisioned, not just the word-for-word implementation in the scope of work.”

“Kainos also supported our deployment with Smart, their automated testing tool designed exclusively for Workday. We were awestruck by it. Smart enabled us to massively reduce manual testing efforts and remain on course to go-live on time. It surpassed our expectations and what we had envisioned – it really helped to accelerate our deployment. As a result, it’s something we just can’t live without now,” says Trevor.

Knowledge Transfer Drives Self-Sufficiency  

Teranet wanted to ensure their team could confidently manage and operate in their new Workday environment post go-live. Kainos prioritized knowledge transfer to help deliver that outcome, reflecting their profound knowledge of Workday and how the internal systems worked. Complex implementations always have surprises and modifications, so having an extremely robust team with strong Workday familiarity was key.

While it’s always possible to tweak and implement processes differently than the Workday design, the Kainos team positioned Teranet for success by carefully evaluating the organization's business processes and advising the team on best practices within Workday. As a result, Teranet was able to quickly take over the full operation and maintenance of the system following their deployment.

“Kainos evaluated every requirement and if it wasn’t the best way to implement something in Workday, they pushed back. They absolutely followed through on the expectation to keep us on track with best practices for implementing Workday in a way that wouldn’t leave us with any customizations that would be difficult to maintain for future upgrades to the software,” adds Mike.

Flexibility for Rapid Growth

The real test came in the form of integrating acquired businesses, setting up new legal entities and divesting businesses. The deployment went so smoothly that Teranet was quickly able to begin onboarding some of the companies they had acquired in the past, but which had continued to use their own finance systems due to the complexity and cost-prohibitive nature of Teranet’s former system. As a result, it became possible to get full reporting, analytics and projections that reflect the entire company, rather than having to bring in numbers from a diverse network of systems.

Trevor explains, “A month after we went live, we sold a number of our companies. We consulted with the Kainos team about how to split them out of the system. In Workday, this was fairly straightforward. If we had stuck with our previous vendor, I don’t think we would have been able to do it, or it would have been almost entirely manual. That’s a major advantage for us.”

Positioned for Growth with Workday and Kainos

The project was delivered on time, on budget and remotely within an eight-month period, giving Teranet the confidence to move forward with new integrations to further streamline their operations. Workday Financials has significantly reduced the time it takes for reconciliation and journal entries, and increased the efficiency of key financial processes.

In addition, Teranet completed a concurrent deployment of Workday Adaptive Planning, which enables them to plan, execute, and analyze in a single system. With ambitions to grow their Workday footprint, Teranet also have plans to add the Advanced Compensation module to their Workday stack in the near future.

Trevor concludes, “We really enjoy working with the Kainos team. This was a complex project, and we listed all of the potential risks at the outset—but global pandemic was not on the list. I don't think we ever anticipated doing it from home. That scenario was beyond what we could have imagined. Still, regardless of what we faced, Kainos handled it with professionalism and a sense of humour. It’s great when you can get the project successfully completed and enjoy it at the same time.”