Overview
Best Friends Animal Society (Best Friends) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the belief that every pet has a story and that all are worth saving. Founded in 1984, Best Friends operates the nation’s largest no-kill sanctuary for companion animals and is committed to saving the lives of homeless pets by working with shelters and passionate people to Save Them All. Best Friends provides rehabilitation services for special needs animals and those who need time before adoption at their base location in southern Utah. They operate in five other locations across the country to provide services such as adoption, low cost spay/neuter, and community programs, and collaborate with more than 4,800 like-minded partners to increase lifesaving measures.
To better support their mission, Best Friends needed a modern platform for their Finance and HR operations that would allow them to automate manual processes, adopt leading practices, access data more efficiently, and scale their operations. Achieving these objectives would provide more time to focus on their mission and vision.
The Challenge
As Best Friends grew, they found themselves with multiple systems that housed information independently and relied on manual transfer of data to maintain them. They had the foresight to seek a solution with Workday that would consolidate both their Finance and HR platforms into one product, eliminating manual transfer of information. To keep their operations running smoothly, they needed to deploy Workday Finance first and then continue with their Human Capital Management (HCM) deployment. Also critical for Best Friends was limiting the customizations required for their technology platform to meet their unique needs, which would help control both the time required and the cost of implementing a new system. They wanted a platform they could standardize easily to continue to focus on their important mission of saving the animals in America’s shelters, with options to customize and expand down the road.
The Solution
CrossVue partnered closely with Best Friends by first demoing Workday’s functionality customized to Best Friends’ needs so they could envision what the future platform could look like. Then they built out a multi-phased project that deployed Workday Finance first, followed by HCM. Throughout the deployment, the Best Friends and CrossVue teams worked cohesively and were extremely detailed in their approach, tested extensively, and encouraged each other throughout the process to find the best possible path forward. This collaborative approach stemmed from the two organizations aligning culturally, with the same beliefs and foundations that put people and customers first and doing the right thing. The excellent teamwork allowed the teams to problem solve when challenges arose, as with any implementation, and they got through it deploying their principles of dedication and commitment to each other and the project. CrossVue helped ensure Best Friends deployed Workday in the exact manner that would enable them to focus fully on their mission.
The Impact
With the completion of their Workday deployments, Best Friends’ accounting and HR operations are now on a modern, cloud-based system, marking a significant technological advancement for their organization and streamlining access and data for their managers. Workday provided new tools to manage processes previously handled in excel or manually, and a single source for information and reporting.
Best Friends is continually working on optimizations for their Workday configuration following the successful deployment of the HCM modules. They are onboarding new hires quickly and easily across the country – with the new system considering different geographic employment law and benefits requirements – and making the process smooth for all Best Friends employees.
Making the move to Workday has added flexibility, ease, and automation to all internal aspects of the operations of Best Friends, allowing employees to spend less time on processes and more time on their mission of rescuing, rehabilitating, and providing a sanctuary for homeless and special needs animals.
With Workday, Best Friends:
- Consolidated nine different systems into Workday’s platform
- Averages 900 employees, 200 managers, 400 remote workers
- Had fast, high adoption of the system by end users
Best Friends has future goals to enhance user experience through Workday HELP, create more robust reporting dashboards for Management, launch LEARN platform, integrate with Outlook and Teams, and roll out a safety platform.
Client Testimonial
Working with CrossVue provided Best Friends access to extensive knowledge in all areas of Workday. Their team had a robust variety of expertise who guided and shared best practices to help Best Friends make appropriate configuration decisions. The leads were knowledgeable, consistent, transparent, responsive, and patient in helping our team understand Workday concepts. CrossVue helped us think outside the box to find solutions to our unique business needs. They provided useful tools for project tracking, change management, and testing. They were committed to the success of the project and delivering it on time. We have continued our relationship with them with a post-production support agreement that still gives us access to their vast knowledge and expertise to help us resolve issues and optimize our Workday configuration.”
–Becky Otton, Director of Business Systems & Analysis
