Today’s challenging market conditions and increasingly competitive landscape has made financial strategy more critical than ever. In a recent webinar, Robertjan Dekker, vice president, controller EMEA, APAC, and LATAM at Netflix, and Robert Bloor, group finance controller at Equiniti, share how they managed to close their books and operate finances when the global pandemic hit, as well as how they’re preparing for the future. Below are each of their experiences.
Equiniti Goes Live Remotely
Equiniti, a specialist in technology, finance, and administrative services for complex and regulated markets, was preparing to move all of its financial and payroll systems globally into Workday in April 2020. Then, the pandemic hit.
Bloor shared that at first, the company’s biggest concern was that the pandemic would cause a significant number of people to become sick and unable to work. What they hadn't anticipated —back in February 2020—was that the pandemic would cause a complete and sustained lockdown, creating an out-of-office work environment. Therefore, the company had to assess whether or not they still wanted to go live in these circumstances.
Bloor revealed that since the organization had finished all of its face-to-face work prior to the lockdown—including testing and review—they took a balanced, risk-assessed decision and forged ahead. When Equiniti went live onWorkday Payroll, the deployment went smoothly. This instilled confidence in the team that they would be able to successfully go live remotely with the rest ofWorkday Financial Managementduring these complex times, and they were right.
The team successfully performed its first virtual close in April 2020 in just eight (very long) days. But, each month-end was better than the one before, moving from closing the books in eight days to six days to seven (which included Equiniti’s half-year close), to just five days with employees working regular business hours. In addition, Equiniti has also completely overhauled the way it manages the time-sheeting system for about 2,000 employees.