The organization
After more than a century of business success, our client, a Quebec-based agricultural solutions provider, strategically aimed to enhance efficiency through targeted technology consolidation. To help it succeed, BDO was engaged to perform a Dayforce system implementation.
The multidisciplinary agricultural giant had experienced significant business growth, driven by a series of entrepreneurial acquisitions. It now operates in 28 countries across all continents and has a workforce of approximately 5,200 employees.
Its offerings include products and services across agricultural engineering, food packaging, water and waste management, and digital manufacturing. The company also conducts research and development for new technologies in agricultural robotics.
The challenge
Following its steady expansion, the company’s operations became highly complex, spanning multiple locations, business units, and service lines. This led to disjointed, outdated, and siloed human capital management (HCM) systems.
This decentralized structure posed significant workforce challenges, as head counts were managed on a country-by-country basis with no unified reporting system. As a result, the headquarters often lacked awareness of the platforms used by different operations, leading to setbacks that caused widespread operational inefficiencies, inaccuracies, and financial loss.
Manual processes for capturing employee time, shift management, and payroll generation for a diverse workforce across multiple locations were time consuming and error prone. The company struggled to accurately track employee time off, leading to overpayments, while payroll inaccuracies led to employee dissatisfaction and a higher administrative workload.
The company relied on HR data to calculate labour standards like efficiency and productivity, a process that was labour-intensive and often yielded unreliable results.
The lack of a centralized system also made it difficult for employees to access their information, leading to decreased engagement and morale.
On top of that, keeping up with ever-changing labour laws and regulations across their global operations was challenging, risking non-compliance and potential fines.
The solution
To address these challenges, the company engaged a BDO-led implementation of Dayforce, a comprehensive, cloud-based HCM system that integrates workforce planning and cost management in a unified system.
Laying the foundation for successful Dayforce integration
Once we completed an initial assessment, it became clear the company would benefit from extensive groundwork to fully understand its processes before implementing Dayforce. Without a clear grasp of its processes and organizational structure, the full extent of benefits that Dayforce can provide isn’t fully apparent.
As a result, BDO’s role expanded significantly beyond a standard system implementation. Our team provided consulting advice on how to streamline their operations, identified blind spots in their HR systems, and facilitated a ground-up understanding of their systems and processes.
“There was a significant amount of time spent aligning the organization around guiding principles, bringing an element of standardization to the table, and engaging centralized corporate and country-specific stakeholders,” Mills says.
“This wasn’t a normal implementation—it was highly complex. The client hadn't done a global project of this size or scale before and leaned heavily on us to be their guide through the entire process.”
We leveraged a four-step strategy to help our client achieve a seamless transition and effective Dayforce integration:
We started with a thorough analysis of the agricultural company’s existing systems and processes across global business units and identified areas of opportunity and improvement. Understanding the baseline is a critical step for mapping the journey from point A to point B.
As part of this evaluation, we considered input from key stakeholders to ensure a holistic view of the company’s operational needs. Our efforts were instrumental in assembling stakeholders from their various businesses and operational units, facilitating dialogue and collaboration toward identifying and adopting a unified solution.
We developed and are helping execute a tailored implementation plan to ensure seamless integration with the company’s existing systems, including its enterprise resource planning (ERP) program, ensuring they can maintain their management, dashboards, reporting, and production without disruption. This involved a thorough examination of its current system architecture to identify potential areas of impact, challenges, and opportunities.
Engaging in a collaborative process, we worked closely with the company’s internal teams to understand their specific needs, workflows, and objectives.
We are providing extensive training and change management support to smooth the company’s adoption and usage of Dayforce and clearly anticipate the impact on its people and processes. By acting pre-emptively, we can address challenges early and lay the foundation for a seamless implementation.
“Our approach to change management involves meeting our clients and their people where they're at in the flow of work and helping them understand how tomorrow looks different from today,” says Mills.
“We equip them with the right training and communication strategy that teaches them what life will look like after we deploy our technology so that once we go live, these users are well-equipped to thrive under the new ways of working.”
Dayforce will offer ongoing support and optimization services to our client to ensure the system meets evolving business needs.
Working closely with the Dayforce team, we are keeping them well-informed of every development, milestone, and challenge encountered along the way, ensuring they understand the specific needs of our client. This proactive approach is critical in facilitating effective post-deployment support.
The outcome & benefits
With a BDO-led Dayforce implementation, our client is on a path to overcome its workforce management challenges, leading to improved operational efficiency, cost savings, compliance, and employee satisfaction.
Our support empowers the company to address immediate challenges while laying a foundation for sustainable growth in the digital manufacturing industry.
The implementation of Dayforce is expected to result in significant improvements:
Cost savings
In all, the client will reclaim an estimated 3-5% of the payroll amount.
The company will also see a noticeable decrease in the cost of ownership, as 12 disparate HR systems are combined into one global HCM. Implementing more efficient scheduling practices not only boosts employee engagement by providing balanced workloads, but also drives cost savings by minimizing overtime.
From 12 disparate HCM platforms to one global Dayforce system.
Enhanced payroll accuracy
Streamlined scheduling
Improved compliance
Increased employee engagement
Navigating the modern workplace
Work stress and change lead to employee burnout. Businesses need solutions.
Contact
Tackle your complex workforce management challenges with the support of a BDO-led implementation of Dayforce. Our team includes former Dayforce employees with deep experience in the platform and its applications. With each engagement, we bring leading practices that challenge the status quo and pave the way for innovation and improvement.
Our philosophy is that technology on its own cannot drive change—it must align with the needs of businesses and its people. We view technology deployment as an organizational transformation supported by a robust change management strategy that ensures end-user adoption.
Schedule a free consultation to discuss your workforce needs.
Contact us to learn more:
Jesaiah Mills, Partner, National People Experience Leader
Elida Eid, Senior Manager, Technology – People Experience
Sagor Roy, Senior Manager, Technology – People Experience
