Flourishing after a significant acquisition

Sowing the seeds of collaboration

A few years ago, a diversified agriculture company took a giant step to grow its fertilizer production and distribution business in South America, one of the world’s preeminent agricultural markets. An acquisition of another company gave it a tremendous opportunity to capitalise on the fast-growing Brazilian agricultural market. Previously, the company had also acquired another Peru-based company. The two acquisitions added over 9,000 employees to the company—almost twice the size of its existing workforce. As part of the overall mergers and acquisitions (M&A) process, the company set out to align the new employees under its global human resources (HR) processes and integrate them into its existing cloud-based human resource management system, Workday HCM. Having collaborated Deloitte for its original Workday HCM implementation several years ago, as well as having consulted with Deloitte on several aspects of the M&A with two South American companies, the company engaged Deloitte to unite the operations of the three companies and to support the full effort for Workday HCM.

Harvesting their investment

Deloitte assembled team members from the United States, Brazil, and Uruguay to manage several HCM harmonisation initiatives that included shared services, benefits, talent management and organisational design. Together, the team adapted the existing global and local solution to support the new populations brought into Workday. The scope of the project included aligning the acquired companies with the global Workday HCM processes.

Updating existing processes and integrating employee data in the Workday platform was key for the team. Before the acquisition, the Brazilian-based acquired company had used other on-premise solutions for HR and payroll. To meet the synergy targets defined during the M&A, the team helped migrate this acquired company’s employees into the existing payroll solution and integrated it with the Workday platform. Deloitte provided support in restructuring the new organisation and assimilating it into the global structure. They also helped to implement a new service model that allowed the combined companies to take advantage of shared services, such as purchasing and payables, across the worldwide organisation.

Growing strong

When the Workday implementation went live, they celebrated having a total of approximately 13,000 employees in six countries on board with a modernised, cloud-based platform. Workday HCM allowed the company to have a centralised HR system practically right out of the gate. For the employees impacted by the acquisition, their experience moved quickly to complete the integration and they were able to easily access benefits, schedule time off and check payroll status. The company emphasised Deloitte’s experience and insight regarding the local business practices and culture. The team brought Workday expertise, plus an understanding of local taxes, governance and languages.

As it looks to the future, the company has mapped out a sustainability journey that encompasses people, society, the environment, and company performance. Globally harmonised HR processes through Workday will help them remain well positioned to achieve its promise of engaging and empowering their employees. They also know they can rely upon Deloitte and Workday to help optimise its global HR processes and operations to achieve its performance and sustainability goals.