A unified Workday solution for Arvada, Colorado

Challenge 

The City of Arvada, Colorado, and its 700 employees were grappling with redundant processes, manual workstreams, and outdated technology, leading to erroneous reporting and inaccurate financial and human resources data. Compounding these challenges were resource constraints that limited staff members’ ability to manage the more than 1,400 unique requirements governing municipal operations.  

Financial transparency was an especially pressing challenge. The city, which works with more than 3,000 vendors, had been using procurement cards for small expenditures and had no visibility into overall spending until invoicing occurred. Similar blind spots hindered other aspects of day-to-day governing, from tracking inventory in the city’s main warehouse to managing dozens of grant award contracts. 

City leaders engaged Guidehouse to help phase out legacy systems and workflows and harmonize municipal government operations with a modern, comprehensive enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. 

Approach 

At the outset, city leaders shared that their major implementation project goals were to: 

• Improve efficiency by reducing manual workarounds, eliminating redundancy, improving reporting, enhancing transparency, and reducing process steps and errors through automation 
• Implement a modern, user-friendly technology solution built on best practices that could provide enhanced cybersecurity and real-time data to inform business decisions 
• Empower employees by eliminating paperwork, supplying accurate information, improving data access, and offering upskilling and career-advancement opportunities  

We determined that the full suite of Workday solutions—Human Capital Management (HCM), Finance, and Payroll—would provide the ideal unified ERP system for accomplishing those goals. As a full-service implementation partner, we also recognized that change management and end-user training would be a critical complement to successful platform activation.  

To ensure wide, sustained adoption, we combined standard Workday implementation best practices with our Guidehouse Base Camp methodology. This includes workshops on process discovery, technology proficiency, and organizational readiness as well as onboarding of internal change champions, who serve as peer leaders during and after the transition. 

Through that process, our team developed an in-depth understanding of the city’s pain points and key value drivers. That in turn helped us tailor the solution by developing a unique reporting structure, a streamlined inventory mobile monitoring system, Workday punchouts, and other custom adaptations to meet city workers’ specific needs. 

Underpinning our work at all times was a critical message conveyed to city employees: The Workday deployment would be a positive, lasting transformation for the city, not just an operational or technological “lift and shift.”

Impact 

Following the Workday solution’s go-live, the City of Arvada has seen immediate, concrete improvements across its core functions and operations, including: 

• A significant boost in central finance team capacity thanks to a streamlined accounts payable function and the ability of personnel in individual departments to enter spend transactions 
• Improved reconciliation effectiveness and efficiency through real-time bank statement data 
• A more transparent grants management process due to centralized data and real-time visibility into budgets, spending, and compliance 
• A user-friendly, transparent procurement process enabled by Workday punchouts that serve as an online shopping hub for city employees, with built-in controls and full department-spend visibility 
• The elimination of shadow systems that had created fragmentation and misalignment across departments 
• Mobile tracking and monitoring of nearly 700 individual items of warehouse inventory 

One of the most visible, impactful improvements has been an empowered HR function that’s streamlining recruitment, hiring, onboarding, upskilling, and other core capabilities. Immediate outcomes include: 

• Migration of more than 1,800 historical employment records from spreadsheets to the new system without compromising data retention policies 
• Inclusion of seasonal employees in the new ERP system, allowing them seamless self-service access to pay slips, tax forms, and other documentation
• Coordinated, automated communication about employee and candidate IT requests, benefits status, and more
• Successful migration of the performance review process to Workday a year earlier than planned
• Successful migration of the open enrollment process
• 100% compliance with Workday’s performance and talent review functionality 

Anecdotal outcomes speak volumes, too. Not long after the Workday platforms launched, the city’s payroll manager was able to take her first continuous two-week vacation in 10 years.