Unilever moves its HR system to the cloud with Workday HCM

Fast-moving consumer goods manufacturer Unilever presses on with cloud strategy after opting for SAP HANA Cloud

Unilever, the fast-moving consumer goods manufacturer, whose brands include Dove soaps, Vaseline and Ben & Jerry's, has selected Workday's Human Capital Management (HCM) HR system.

Unilever, which employs more than 174,000 people in 90 countries, will move its HR operations to the cloud, and Chano Fernandez, president EMEA at Workday, suggested that the solution will provide Unilever with "real-time analytics into its global workforce".

"With this foundation, Unilever can easily adapt to business change and access insights that can help drive decision making," he said.

Unilever has focused its efforts on moving much of its IT infrastructure into the cloud. In June at SAP Sapphire in Orlando, former CIO Willem Eelman explained that the company was working on a hybrid-cloud solution because it wanted to maintain some footprint on-premise.

"We will go public cloud where it makes sense, for HR we are already a big user of Amazon Web Services, on core ERP we will be more careful and go hybrid," he said at the time.

Meanwhile, another firm that has selected Workday's HCM solution is King, the company behind the popular smartphone game Candy Crush Saga. The company, which launched its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) earlier this year, is now expanding its use of the solution.

"After experiencing success with Workday HCM, we are now moving finance to the Workday cloud and creating a technology foundation that can support our rapid growth and drive business forward," said Nick Pointon, vice president of finance at King.

"With Workday's unified financial management and HR system, we will have a single source for our critical operational and financial information giving us greater agility," he added.