I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. Here is the index to all the interviews in this series.
This time it is Emily McEvilly, Chief Customer Officer at Workday. Aneel Bhusri, co-CEO of Workday has been one of the early guests in this series so it was good to get Emily back to provide an update.
Emily talks about more customer heroics and also those at partners. Every project implementation, training etc. has been virtual during the last few months. Not just small projects - she mentions payroll/HCM projects tackling up to half a million employees.
She talks about how the CHRO's world has turned upside down during the pandemic and how Workday has helped them - work from home, remote training, social justice, physical site protocols, employee mental health issues among other demands. As I have written here there have been at least 12 major disruptions to the world of analytics and we discuss how Workday and its CFO customers have similarly coped. She describes "record number of plans", external auditor remote access of records etc.
I had interviewed Emily in January about her SI partner ecosystem, so it was good to hear her compliment how they have since adjusted to a world of restricted travel. She describes that but goes on to say virtual deployments are increasingly "table stakes". She is as impressed with the "tooling" and automation they have invested in and passing labor savings on to customers.
I did not expect her to talk much about Workday internally but I am glad she does about how they have "led with transparency and authenticity" and how they have been inspired by customer creativity, while continuing to themselves inspire customers.
Very symbiotic how Workday, customers and partners have coped together during the crisis. Emily does a nice job describing multiple dimensions of those relationships.
