Just six years after it first launched its pioneering mobile banking experience in 2015, N26 was voted the world’s best bank by Forbes in 2021. Much of this rapid success has to do with its DNA as a product-driven, cloud-based tech company, in an industry that’s heavily based on legacy IT systems. As a result, N26 could uniquely offer a truly digital mobile banking experience, enabling customers to seamlessly onboard and start using their accounts in just eight minutes.
But it came to recognise in 2019 that, as a highly disruptive and fast-growing neobank, it had seen some significant changes of its own, and it was outgrowing its existing systems. There was little transparency on financial data, an overreliance on Excel, and people were struggling with up to five logins every day and difficulties with sharing data. Now, as an increasingly global business, N26 needed a technology platform that could flex and scale with it, supporting agility and innovation through every fibre of the organisation. That platform was Workday.
Our mission is to delight our customers. Workday allows us to focus on what really matters.
Arno Schleussner, Director Finance, Reporting & Capital Planning
Consolidating multiple systems into one solution.
Before N26 implemented Workday at the heart of its finance and people operations, there were signs as it grew in scale and complexity that its technology platform was failing to keep up with increasing demands. People had to log into several different platforms every day, using different passwords, with no way of transferring their data or accessing real-time reports.
Now all that has changed. According to Arno Schleussner, Director Finance, Reporting & Capital Planning, “With Workday, we consolidated multiple systems into one simple-to-use solution across Finance, HR and Planning. Having one system is really the key to the agility and innovation we need, and we are seeing tremendous gains already in accessing real-time financial data, employee productivity and user satisfaction.”
“What is really exciting is that we are still yet to implement Workday Adaptive Planning, which will give us an even stronger system-based planning infrastructure than we have today.”
Real-time data for planning and evaluation.
Now, with high-quality live data at their fingertips, members of N26’s Finance teams can create customer-designed reports on demand and provide complete transparency of information to fellow users in real time. Collaboration between teams has radically improved, and reduced reliance on outdated technologies like Excel spreadsheets is significantly enhancing efficiency at every level.
These gains in turn are helping to drive N26’s ongoing transformation from a young fintech start-up to market leader in one of the world’s most competitive and demanding industries.
Heightened productivity and user satisfaction.
By supporting the agility that helps N26 to pivot and flex as demands change, Workday is driving improved productivity across the organisation. The Finance team, for example, is now closing the books each month in just five days – for the whole Group, on a global scale, and to a higher level of quality than before.
An important part of this improved productivity is due to the Workday platform being deliberately configured to empower end-users to manage their own processes. As a result, despite people being asked to complete additional administrative steps, their time is being freed to focus on what matters most to them and their customers.
Streamlined internal processes.
With its fast-growing international workforce, N26 needs simple internal processes in a language everybody understands, regardless of their role or expertise. This is what Workday is increasingly delivering, enabling teams across the world to focus on developing faster, more agile ways of bringing customers the unique front-end experience and back-end security that set N26 apart.