Silvia Calvo: “Great customer and employee satisfaction sells itself”
Silvia Calvo went to Workday Rising EMEA in Barcelona on behalf of SuccessDay. What struck the AMS Senior Technical Workday Consultant, who soon will be the Project Manager of the Workday implementation at SuccessDay itself, the most? “I am grateful that I got the change to visit the event, learning all the ins and outs of the HCM system and getting to know a lot of new people. If you want to network, this is the place to be!”
Silvia lives in Madrid, the same city as her SuccessDay colleague Lucia, who joined her to Workday Rising in Barcelona. In Lucia’s blog, you can read more about her insights after visiting the event. In this Blog, Silvia will introduce herself and tell you more about her main take-aways from Workday Rising EMEA.
“Workday has been actively involved in building AI applications since 2013. At Workday Rising EMEA, they highlighted their leading role in the AI revolution within the business sector. Workday emphasized their commitment to leveraging AI responsibly to facilitate the success of their customers. By fostering close collaboration with partners and customers, Workday aims to collectively harness the potential of generative AI”, Silvia explains.
In her opinion, some of the most promising updates that Workday will soon provide include Semantic Contract Search. This feature allows users to search for contracts using related terms that may not be explicitly stated in the document itself. It enhances the relevance of retrieved results based on semantic similarity, going beyond simple text matching or overlap. “This improvement significantly enhances users’ ability to search for and discover contracts they might not have been aware of, ultimately saving time and streamlining the search experience.”
Among the noteworthy updates soon to be provided by Workday, are the improvements in Search Insights. This feature ‘gives back’ search query data through Workday’s reporting framework, offering insights into aggregate search query behavior. “This data empowers users to make informed configuration decisions, ensuring that essential features are more discoverable. Additionally, it aids in understanding real-world needs and problems affecting the workforce.”
Newbie at SuccessDay
Silvia joined SuccessDay in July 2023. “I’m a newbie. That’s why I was so surprised that the company gave me the change to visit the event. I heard the news during my vacation in Japan and I could not believe my ears when they called me to ask me if I wanted to attend the event.” Apparently, in her first four months, she had already made a good impression or done a lot of work to qualify for this reward.
Silvia (33) studied Social Work in Salamanca in Spain. “I’m a crisis baby, since I was 18 years old when the credit crunch started in 2008. After I graduated, I moved to the UK, where there were more opportunities for me to start my career than in Spain, where it was tough.” After a couple of years she came back and started working at IBM in Madrid as a recruiter. There is where she learned about Workday for the first time. “Unfortunately, IBM didn’t give me the opportunity to start my Workday practice, so I moved to a smaller company that is called Business Network Builders (BNB). There I got my Workday certifications and fulfilled multiple consultancy roles for the last three years.”
A really good place to work
Earlier this year, Silvia was contacted by a recruiter if she was interested in a transfer to SuccessDay. She had never heard of that name and in the beginning, she was not that into it, because it was – in her own words – “consultancy again”. “I thought: if I’m switching jobs, maybe I should look for an end user client.” But she decided to go for a talk anyway. “Everyone I spoke there was nice and amazing. I soon realized that this is a really good place to work. Everyone was clear with their goals. And I saw this opportunity to grow with the company. Here I can learn about all elements before, during and after a Workday implementation. Because it is a relatively new company you get more opportunities to have a say in everything and to discuss and discover together and set up like the roadmap for the future together.”
She started at the AMS Team. What she liked the most was that people trusted her expertise and that she could make things easier for them. At this point, Silvia is Project Manager for the implementation of Workday at SuccessDay. The company has grown so much over the past five years that it is ready to implement a global HRIT system itself. The implementation – including the modules HCM, Performance, Succession Planning and (Advanced) Compensation – starts mid-January 2024 and will take a couple of months. “I’m getting everything done from scratch and can design the processes and make all important decisions to set up how it’s going to be in the future. For me, this is amazing.”
Getting a common ground
After this, she would like to be a Project Manager for Workday implementations at customers of SuccessDay as well. “There are some nice prospects. But first things fist: the next couple of months I work fully dedicated on the implementation at SuccessDay.” What she likes the most about being a project manager is getting a common ground between the customer and the implementation partner or the consultant. “Sometimes the customer gets stressed out because people were just doing their job and now, we get there and it’s like: “you need to do this and this”. I think that I get to a point that I know how to manage the expectations and this kind of overwork. I just try to make their lives easier. And that’s a great job.”
Lucia and Silvia at Workday Rising
Silvia saw Workday Rising as an amazing opportunity – not only to enjoy the activities that they have prepared, but also to get to know people. “I met a lot of other specialists and consultants, but also customers and prospects. And there were a lot of stands where you can go and learn about hot topics. For example, we went to a session on the Workday Equity Plan about how you can make your teams more inclusive. It was amazing to see how to keep track of those things in Workday.”
Silvia and Lucia also visited the presentation of Bas Eggelaar, the founder and co-owner of SuccessDay. “It was great to hear him talk about why you should map your Employee Journeys before your HRIT implementation. You always get to learn a lot from people that have experienced it themselves and are really involved in preventing others to step in the same pitfalls.” She expects SuccessDay to win several new contracts because of Workday Rising. How many will only become clear in the coming months or years because organizations do not usually proceed overnight in HRIT implementations.
“In my opinion, the best seller is your actual customer”, adds Silvia. “If the company that you are working with is happy, it’s going to sell. Since 97% of our projects are completed on budget and on time our customer satisfaction is great. And the employees are satisfied as well. I think that there is one more thing, apart of the benefits and everything that is amazing here, and that is they can hire and keep really good people. With the values that we have in the company, the projects, the clarity of the goals, and the progress that we are making, people are really happy at SuccessDay.”
