Empowering HR Transformation: Deloitte’s strategic integration of ServiceNow and Workday for a global financial institution
In this story:
- HR Service Delivery (HRSD) transformation
- Integrated Service Delivery and HR Information System (HRIS) design
- Integration with Workday HR for streamlined data flow and best-in-class employee experience
Managing HR worldwide is a challenge of scale, speed, and employee experience. With more than 100,000 employees globally, a leading financial institution needed to modernize HR operations to better support its growing and diverse workforce. The goal was to improve service delivery by integrating and automating HR functions, using a digital-first approach that would increase employee engagement and streamline HR workflows across every location.
To bring this strategy to life, the institution sought to implement a unified, user-centric, self-service platform that would meet employee needs in real time, while empowering HR teams to deliver faster, more efficient services at scale by:
- Improving employee experience with a unified engagement layer that meets employees in their flow of work.
- Automating HR processes to reduce manual intervention and improve efficiency.
- Enabling global consistency while maintaining flexibility for local compliance requirements.
- Ensuring business continuity, data integrity, and efficient end-to-end HR processes through seamless integration with Workday HR during its initial implementation phase.
Challenge
As a leading financial services organization, the enterprise was grappling with a fragmented HR ecosystem that hindered both employee engagement and operational efficiency. Key HR services were scattered across disconnected tools and channels, forcing employees to navigate multiple systems, intranet pages, and emails to access basic information or submit requests. Employees lacked a centralized tool to access up-to-date HR policies and support or to submit questions and issues through a structured, trackable process. HR teams lacked a modern case management system to support cross-functional collaboration.
While a simple ticketing tool was in place for routine inquiries, more complex requests relied on email, which made it difficult to assign, track, and resolve issues efficiently. This led to employee confusion about where to find help, fragmented processes with limited HR transparency, inconsistent handoffs across teams, and uneven service delivery that weakened the employee experience.
At the same time, the organization was implementing Workday as its new core human capital management (HCM) system. Although some HR processes were intended to remain native to Workday, the transition risked duplicating functionality, creating inefficiencies, and leaving gaps without the right integrations. The transformation was carefully guided by Deloitte’s next-gen process taxonomy to leverage each platform’s out-of-the-box capabilities, avoid duplication, and introduce integrations at the right touchpoints—ensuring a cohesive employee and HR experience across the ecosystem.
To address these challenges, the institution needed a scalable, user-centric HR solution that would:
- Provide a consolidated, single point of access for all HR knowledge, queries, and requests, accessible to employees at any time, through multiple channels.
- Deliver a seamless employee experience by integrating HR services across ServiceNow and Workday, ensuring continuity even when processes span both platforms.
- Replace fragmented email-based support with structured case management that enables effective handoffs and collaboration across HR functions.
- Embed HR services into the employee’s natural flow of work through Microsoft Teams, including chatbot functionality and an integrated HR portal.
- Maintain data accuracy and eliminate redundancy through real-time integration with Workday.
- Support compliance with local regulations while offering a standardized, global experience.
Solution
Deloitte and ServiceNow worked together to implement a comprehensive HRSD solution, integrating over 100 HR services into one unified platform. The solution was designed to work seamlessly with Workday HR, ensuring that data remained synchronized across systems and enabling automated workflows for improved efficiency with:
- Employee service portal: A digital-first, self-service portal was created for employees to access HR services and manage their onboarding, learning, performance reviews, and payroll without the need for HR intervention.
- Integrated case management: Over 100 HR services were automated, allowing HR teams to track and resolve requests efficiently. Integration with Workday HR ensured that employee data was kept up to date and provided a consistent, seamless experience.
- Virtual agent chat: An AI-powered virtual assistant, accessible directly within Microsoft Teams, enabled employees to resolve common HR queries, such as booking holidays, updating personal details, and accessing payroll information—all within the flow of their daily work.
- Knowledge management: Two separate knowledge bases—one for employees and another for HR agents—were created and integrated with Workday HR to provide up-to-date, accessible information for both parties.
- Automated life cycle events: Employee milestones, such as transfers, offboarding, and retirements, were automated, ensuring timely execution while reducing errors. Integration with Workday HR kept employee data synchronized, improving the accuracy of these processes.
- Agile delivery: ServiceNow was delivered using agile methodologies, allowing for rapid deployment and iterative improvements. Despite using different implementation approaches, teams cooperated closely to synchronize priorities, manage dependencies of each technology, and deliver unified, future-ready HR experience without disruption.
This integrated approach provided the organization with a comprehensive HRSD platform that simplified processes and improved the overall employee experience while maintaining system consistency.
Impact
The implementation of ServiceNow HR, integrated with Workday HR, delivered tangible improvements across employee experience, operational efficiency, and global HRSD. The launch of the organization’s ServiceNow HR instance has been foundational in giving teams the ability to modernize case management, embed support within Microsoft Teams, and centralize knowledge across the enterprise. As employees and HR teams embraced the new technology—achieving a 90.2% adoption rate in the initial rollout—the organization established a strong platform for continuous innovation.
With support from Deloitte practitioners and the power of the ServiceNow platform, this global financial organization extended these improvements to deliver measurable impact for employees and HR agents, leading to:
chat conversations handled in the first month, with 78,000+ employees using Microsoft Teams as their preferred channel
colleagues onboarded and 113,000+ logins, demonstrating trust and sustained usage
HR processes automated across 125 services and 85 forms, managed by ~1,000 HR agents supporting thousands of cases
knowledge articles centralized, with 1,500+ updated, 400+ marked helpful, and content continuously improved via employee feedback
platform releases, 5 ServiceNow modules, and ~1,000 user stories delivered to ensure scalability and continuous improvement
