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In Conversation with… Workday
In the next installment of Mercator® by Citco’s (Mercator) ‘In conversation with…’ series, we speak with Donald Boadway, Senior Corporate Paralegal at Workday, about the benefits of having a single service provider, the onboarding experience and Mercator’s secondment progamme.
What motivated Workday to choose Mercator as their global service provider? What made us stand out from other options in the market?
One of the main factors which influenced our decision was the global coverage that Mercator could offer, operating in 180+ jurisdictions. Mercator has also always been open to considering new jurisdictions as well, and is always willing to hear about our needs.
We have also experienced the benefits of having one service provider and a single point of contact during the past year. While we initially thought that this feature would benefit our Corporate and Legal team, it also helped other departments such as Accounts Payables and Accounting.
Having one service provider handling all our international entities also enhanced our visibility of our corporate affairs globally. The Mercator team ensured that all our annual obligations were handled in a timely manner and we were regularly kept informed of the status of each task. Additional services required were also clearly explained to us and that helped us to make informed decisions.
Another benefit of having one service provider is that we only have one invoice to approve as opposed to previous years where we had to review multiple invoices from various service providers in different jurisdictions. Since our collaboration started, all invoices received from Mercator have been accurate with the necessary description to assist us; hence helping us to achieve greater efficiency.
Competitive pricing
Our view at Workday is that when we entered into our service agreement with Mercator, both parties were committed to a long-term relationship. We appreciate the fact that services are priced fairly and we can openly ask a question to the team without the fear of receiving an invoice at a later stage. We enjoy the clear communication from the team regarding billable and non-billable tasks.
How was your onboarding experience? How did our team help you with the transition from having service providers in several jurisdictions to one service provider?
It was a huge job to onboard all our international entities in one go and we are pleased that our onboarding experience was relatively smooth. Mercator demonstrated that they were experienced in handling various entity management platforms, which eased the transfer of documents and information. We did not have to train the team and that saved us considerable time. Mercator even highlighted missing documents per entity and remediated a number of our entities to ensure that we are compliant in all jurisdictions. The Compliance Health Check project was completed in a timely manner and we could confidently move forward with our various projects.
Mercator became our voice in the various jurisdictions with their extensive experience and enabled us to better understand the local ways of proceeding for various assignments. Ultimately, we managed to complete our tasks quicker.
What are the three main benefits you’ve experienced as a result of working with Mercator over the past year? What have you been able to achieve since working with us or what problems have we helped to solve?
Effective Daily Workflow
We can reach out to the team via a common email address and we are confident that one team member will attend to our request promptly. The single point of contact for all jurisdictions is a huge advantage as – irrespective of the country or complexity of the task – we know we can rely on Mercator to assist us.
Greater Efficiency
Having one service provider, a single point of contact and one invoice enables us to achieve greater efficiency in our processes.
Expertise
With Mercator’s global coverage, we get accurate and timely legal updates in all relevant jurisdictions. This enables us to take prompt decisions and manage our risks. We recently received the LATAM report which we found quite insightful, helping us to understand the complexities in the various countries.
Would you say that you have built a strong working relationship with Mercator’s team since our collaboration started?
Since we started working with Mercator, despite a few changes in terms of team members, we did not experience any decline in the level of service. We are quite pleased that any internal transition was handled seamlessly and our tasks were handled without any delay.
We are familiar with the hierarchy which is in place at Mercator and we are comfortable to reach out to any team members as needed.
Over the year, we also expanded the list of contact persons at our end and Mercator responded positively to the changes.
One of the services that Workday subscribed to was a secondment from one of our senior legal officers for a period of ten months. Have we met your expectations and if so, how?
We needed to backfill an internal role and having the option to have an experienced officer from Mercator for a period of ten months enabled us to take our time to hire the right person.
Flora May, Senior Legal Officer, joined us from Mercator on secondment and understood our business from day one, with minimal training required on our side. She blended in easily with Workday team members and carried out all the tasks assigned to her with a high level of professionalism. She was proactive in finding solutions and confident to take the next steps to handle various requests. She was also thorough in her research and was always keen to keep the ball rolling. Overall, Flora May met our expectations and we were pleased to have her as part of our team.
What is the main reason you would recommend Mercator to others?
Mercator’s accountability is commendable. The team is deadline driven and makes sure that all tasks are completed on time. We do not have to follow up to ensure that we meet our statutory deadlines, and we really appreciate the fact that reminders are sent to us four to six weeks ahead of deadlines to give us ample time to coordinate internally. We also understand that some jurisdictions are more complex than others and we do our best to cooperate with the team and provide the necessary information and documents in a timely manner.
Other articles in this series:
In conversation with… Viasat
In conversation with… CIBT Visas
In conversation with Palico Millé, Senior Partner at Estudio Millé Abogados
