The New Technology Elite: How Great Companies Optimize Both Technology Consumption and Production

Chapter 8

Efficient: Amidst Massive Technology Waste

“It was the meeting where our IT council gave me the green light to proceed with a major global project to consolidate 80 different HR systems across the world. We had settled on our existing ERP vendor's software,” says David Smoley, CIO of Flextronics, one of the world's largest electronics contract manufacturers.

“I thanked them for approving such a large project and then I surprised them. I told them I may come back to them in the next month with a ‘better, faster, cheaper’ option.

“Mind you, this was after we had already spent months of evaluating options, systems integrators, building budgets and business cases. But we have a ‘fail faster’ culture here at Flextronics, so they were more intrigued with what I may come back with than surprised.”

The Courage to Be More Efficient

In the month prior to the meeting described above, Smoley had been introduced to Workday, then a startup. He says:

I was immediately impressed by the user interface. It was highly intuitive, attractive and easy to use. Very visual, like Amazon or Google. At the time, usability was one of the biggest issues with the legacy HR packages. I met with the Workday team and got a demo. We discussed technology and I was again impressed by their approach. From my time working in venture capital I knew that some of the earliest and most successful SAAS companies were in the HR space.

After the IT council meeting, the due diligence around Workday grew in intensity. ...