Hinds County, Mississippi
Hinds County streamlines services, empowers staff with Workday.
The Challenge
Hinds County, the most populous county in the state of Mississippi, was operating with a home-grown, 30-year-old, legacy system that was a burden on the IT department and the entire organization. As a small government organization with 900 employees, Hinds County did not have the resources to update its system and was not operating with the same abilities as other local governments that have modernized. People were powerless to access departmental data, and tasks as simple as pulling reports required intervention from the IT team.
“On top of the day-to-day job of making sure all aspects of technology within the county run smoothly, our IT department was doing all of the reporting,” said Beverly Hughes, director of information systems at Hinds County. “Our legacy system did not give us the granularity needed to grant or deny data access on a person-by-person basis, making it difficult for everyone to do their job.”
In addition to transactional simplicity, easier access to reporting, and a more secure system, Hinds County sought to empower employees, standardize processes across departments, break down silos, and gain better visibility into which employees were accountable for each aspect of financial processes.
Key Highlights
Hinds County invested in the entire Workday platform, including Workday Human Capital Management, Workday Payroll, and Workday Financials. County leaders prioritized Workday Financials for the first phase of the deployment because financial operations had the most critical need of modernization. Workday aligned with the county leadership’s goal that all departments work out of the same system. Valuing transparency, the county wanted a system that would provide better visibility into how taxpayer dollars are spent. In addition, Hinds County selected Workday to improve vendor relationships by paying bills faster.
Workday enables the county to meet changing department needs today and in the future. Within a few weeks of the Workday Financials go-live, Hinds County noticed increased transparency of all financial processes. Tasks flow seamlessly, and it is immediately evident who plays a part in each financial transaction. This allows the county to redirect resources to clear bottlenecks and ensure employees aren’t wasting time with administrative tasks and can instead focus on the things that make the county more effective and efficient.
Importantly, employees are empowered to access data and reporting independently, reducing reliance on IT. Workday makes it easy for employees and managers to get useful information. With a single application to manage administration, payroll, human resources, and more, Hinds County is delivering on its vision of unprecedented visibility, technology simplification, and collaboration across departments.
“Workday has empowered all members of the team to do their jobs without having to wonder what is happening in some other part of the organization. Whether it’s accounting or purchasing, everyone has better visibility into the business and access to just the right information and actions.”
-Beverly Hughes, director of information systems
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