Workday Implementation: Going Beyond the Scope with 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.

In Manitoba, Teranet owns and operates The Property Registry, providing certification of titles to land, maintains land records and offers reliable information of financial interests in personal property to the public.

Additionally, Teranet also offers a complementary suite of innovative solutions for a number of key industries, including real estate, financial services, law, and government and utilities. Most recently Teranet expanded its global footprint and registry business through the full acquisition of Foster Moore, a New Zealand-based global market player in the government register sector.

Finding a True Fit: Consultants Who Care

With their legacy system due for retirement, Teranet was looking for a suitable financial system and the right team for the implementation. They had been live with Workday HCM for their HR department since 2016, so they were familiar with the benefits of Workday’s software.

Teranet began exploring Workday as a Finance solution in 2018. They were clear that they needed a vendor that would be dedicated to their needs—and having worked with large vendors and large system integrators in the past, they wanted to explore beyond the conventional options, looking for integrators that would put in the time and care to get things right.

Teranet defined a strict set of criteria for their partner selection including deep financials expertise, a track record in delivering Medium Enterprise solutions and the ability to make recommendations - not just follow 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.

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 system integrators. 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.

Rapid Change: Meeting M&A Challenges

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, they had several acquired companies that were using separate finance systems. This made 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”.

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 commenced the process with a proposed system definition based on their legacy platform, but with the desire to make sure that they weren’t 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. There were a lot of requirements gathering and discovery even after the initial spec, and there was some scope creep, but Kainos was really good to us. They just took it on. Little bits of work here, little bits of work there—it added up. We were never charged extra for it. I really appreciate that.”

“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,” adds Trevor.

Breaking Free: Self-Sufficiency  

Teranet wanted to make sure that when Workday was up and running, they could manage and operate the system themselves. Kainos was dedicated to making sure they delivered that outcome, which reflected 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 understood that self-sufficiency and ease of maintenance required adherence  to the standards set within the Workday process. 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.

Key to Success: Flexibility for Rapid Growth

The real test came in the form of integrating acquired businesses, setting up new legal entities and divestitures of businesses. The system integration went so smoothly that Teranet started onboarding some of the companies they had acquired in the past, but which had continued to use their own finance systems, because the change to their previous system was too costly. Now, it became possible to move them on board. 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.”

Looking Back: Projecting Forward 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 integrations they had previously hesitated to do. Workday Financials has cut the time it takes for reconciliation and journal entries in half and streamlined many financial processes. The company can now do projections and analytics on every aspect of their activity without having to collate data from different systems.

With ambitions to grow their Workday footprint, Teranet also have plans to go live with Workday Adaptive Planning in a few months, as well as adding the Advanced Compensation module to their Workday stack.

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.”