Pandora Grows its Talent in the Cloud with Vana Workforce
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Case Study: Pandora Pandora Grows its Talent in the Cloud with Vana Workforce Why Pandora Chose Vana Workforce as its Platform for Managing Growth and Consistency By Yvette Cameron Vice President and Principal Analyst Content Editor: R “Ray” Wang Copy Editor: Maria Shao February 14, 2013
In 2010, Pandora Radio began a journey to move its entire Information Technology (IT)
infrastructure into the cloud to create an agile, sustainable platform for future growth.
Integral to the success of that strategy was a cloud-based Human Capital Management
(HCM) technology.
Problem Existing workforce processes and systems were insufficient to
support rapid growth
No central system of record for workforce data
Required a SaaS-based HCM system that would seamlessly
integrate with and unify other cloud applications
Solution SaaS-based HCM suite for end-to-end employee lifecycle
support from Vana Workforce
Unified HCM platform serves as system of record for all other
cloud applications, including Salesforce.com
Introduced social, mobile and advanced business intelligence
(BI) capabilities
Benefits Centralized system of record promotes consistency across
broader cloud ecosystem and serves as a platform for growth
Improved process automation, efficiency and self-sufficiency
Better decision support through improved business insights
Improved collaboration and accessibility to social and mobile
support native to the platform
Launched in 2005, PANDORA (NYSE: P) is the leading
Internet radio service, with more than 70 percent
market share among the top 20 Internet radio service
providers. Its dramatic growth is due to an innovative Company: Pandora
model of identifying the “genetic code” of every music
track – over 400 unique attributes – and using this Headquarters: Oakland,
code to generate playlists with similar characteristics to Calif.
a user’s favorite song or artist. In this way, Pandora
enables people to enjoy music they know and discover 2012 Revenue: $275 million
new music that they’ll love. Pandora went public in
June 2011 and today employs 662 people nationwide, No. Employees: 662
with annual revenues topping $275 million. It had 65.6
Business: Internet radio
million active listeners as of the end of January 2013.
Most listeners use the ad-supported service for free.
© 2013 Constellation Research, Inc. All rights reserved 2The period from 2000 through 2010 brought tremendous growth in both Internet usage
and the availability of streaming media, fueling the significant growth of Internet radio
during that decade. Pandora was an early innovator in Internet radio, utilizing a
recommendation-engine approach based on the Music Genome Project™, a sophisticated
taxonomy of musical characteristics. By late 2009, with high customer growth and plans
for an initial public offering, Pandora began to evaluate its internal technology
infrastructure against anticipated growth demands. It needed a cost-effective, agile
technology infrastructure that would allow for rapid scalability; ease of implementation
and maintenance; access to frequent innovations; and easy integration with
Salesforce.com’s customer relationship management (CRM) technology (a critical
enterprise application used by every Pandora employee) in addition to other current and
planned future technologies.
With these considerations in mind, Pandora determined in 2010 it would move to a cloud-
computing model for its entire enterprise technology infrastructure. “The strategy to put
100 percent of our enterprise systems in the cloud makes us a bit different from other
companies out there,” said Richard Rothschild, Pandora’s vice president of enterprise
information services “but our needs and challenges are not that different.” Already
accustomed to the benefits of providing services to clients through cloud-based offerings,
it was a straightforward decision for Pandora executives to decide that internal IT should
follow suit.
“The strategy to put 100 “Putting all of our applications in the cloud lowered our
percent of our enterprise overall costs; operating in the cloud costs less than
systems in the cloud one-third the cost of an [on-premises] ecosystem”,
makes us a bit different said Rothschild. “Plus, not having to worry about what
from other companies…but version of software we’re on, not having to run
our needs and challenges backups or manage infrastructure issues – it would be
are not that different.” a huge savings to Pandora overall.”
Richard Rothschild Once the decision to move to the cloud was made, the
VP Enterprise Information Systems, next hurdle was to find the right set of applications
Pandora Radio and deploy them quickly, many of them in parallel.
One such critical application was a comprehensive
workforce solution. Pandora needed an application to manage its rapidly growing
workforce and its associated data and talent processes. Pandora’s existing employee
systems and processes were inefficient, disconnected from other enterprise applications
and unable to provide a comprehensive view into the workforce. With its vision of
integrating all applications in the cloud, Pandora would need a “single source of truth”
about who reported to whom in the organization. Pandora also wanted to validate and
drive workflow and approval processes across its many SaaS solutions. Without a
consolidated view of the workforce and organizational structure, Pandora’s strategy for a
frictionless cloud infrastructure was at risk.
© 2013 Constellation Research, Inc. All rights reserved 3After a comprehensive evaluation of cloud-based HCM technologies, Pandora selected the
Vana HCM suite from Vana Workforce. “We realized that Vana had some great
advantages,” said Rothschild. “We looked at other solutions against our needs, but they
just weren’t up to par with the Vana Workforce offering.”
Vana HCM is built on Force.com, Salesforce.com's enterprise cloud computing platform for
building employee-facing applications. Because of this common technology platform, Vana
HCM delivered a user experience similar to what Pandora employees already had with
Salesforce.com. This, in turn, led to increased employee adoption and satisfaction with the
new tool. In addition, because it plugged directly into the Salesforce.com environment,
integration and workflows between Salesforce.com and Vana HCM would be frictionless.
Beyond features and functionality, Rothschild noted that Vana’s commitment to rapid
innovation and its desire to work closely with its clients was another determining factor in
their selection. “Vana wanted us to work very closely with them. They really listened to
the needs of their customers – to us – and have been very responsive.”
In less than nine months from selection to go-live, Pandora deployed Vana HCM, a
comprehensive suite of workforce applications, across its entire workforce. The functions
deployed included the core human
resources (HR) system of record,
compensation, benefits, payroll connect,
absence management, reporting and
analytics, employee and manager self-
service, and Chatter collaboration.
Vana HCM - Deployed modules included:
The core HR system and org Core Employee and Organizational
charting capabilities now form the Data for a global system of record
single source of truth utilized by
many of the SaaS applications Organizational Charting
within Pandora’s cloud-based IT Compensation
ecosystem.
Benefits
Reporting and analytics Payroll Connect
dashboards routinely disseminate
information across the Absence Management
organization. The HR department,
Reporting & Analytics
for example, uses the
dashboarding capabilities to Employee & Manager Self-Service
provide a visualization of talent
Chatter Collaboration
initiatives and outcomes.
Improved decision support is facilitated through employee and manager self-
service, where critical information can be quickly accessed, updated and evaluated.
© 2013 Constellation Research, Inc. All rights reserved 4 Vana HCM supports HTML 5 for cross-mobile platform support, enabling individuals
across the Pandora workforce to interact with Vana HCM anytime, anywhere, on the
device of their choice.
Workforce collaboration supports a more engaged workforce as well as improved
business results. Pandora takes advantage of Chatter, the social collaboration tool
embedded within the Force.com platform and integral to the Vana Workforce
applications.
Future investments under consideration include Vana’s social recruiting, Work.com and
other solutions from the Vana HCM suite.
As Pandora grew, its cloud infrastructure (which now “We knew [Vana’s]
covers more than 80 SaaS applications), required a velocity of change would
centralized repository of workforce and organizational be very high… [but] it is a
information to ensure correct workflows and more-than-acceptable
compliance requirements. Vana HCM has become the tradeoff for always being
central, unifying technology for all of the applications on the current release and
requiring knowledge about the workforce and the overall speed of
organizational data – the single source of truth for- innovation. ”
authorizations, workflows, validation and other Richard Rothschild
process- related workflows dependent upon employee VP Enterprise Information Systems,
data. Pandora Radio
Rapid innovation is another benefit Pandora sees from its selection of Vana Workforce.
When selected, Rothschild and team recognized that the pace of change in the Vana
Workforce applications, as in most SaaS applications, would be significantly faster than
traditional applications. He used this to Pandora’s advantage. “We knew their velocity of
change would be very high, and we liked that they were both investing in the areas we
needed them to go, as well as working closely with us to help set priorities of those
investments.” Product updates arrive frequently, and while sometimes this can be a
challenge for Pandora to absorb, Rothschild added, “it
“Operating in the cloud is a more-than-acceptable tradeoff for always being on
lets us focus all of our time the current release and the overall speed of
on the business. We are innovation.”
more agile and are better
partners to the business” Perhaps the biggest benefit for the IT organization
following the selection of Vana Workforce is its ability
Richard Rothschild to be a better business partner to the rest of the
VP Enterprise Information Systems,
enterprise. “Operating in the cloud lets us focus all of
Pandora Radio
our time on the business,” said Rothschild. “We are
more agile and are better partners to the business.” Being a better partner to the
business translates directly to organizational outcomes and value creation:
© 2013 Constellation Research, Inc. All rights reserved 5 The way in which Pandora engages its employees – onboarding, information access,
process support, collaboration – has moved from a series of manual steps to an
automated, seamless and collaborative system. With a unified HCM solution
integrated with critical business applications including Salesforce.com, the initial
time required to onboard new hires has been reduced by 60 percent.
Deployed as part of a single enterprise platform (with Salesforce.com), the Vana
Workforce solution not only results in improved user adoption, but also significant
cost savings and productivity improvements across the company.
The Vana Workforce solution helps Pandora better meet compliance obligations,
with faster access to consolidated information across the organization. For
example, it has eliminated virtually all exceptions to the employee termination
process (such as timeliness of final payments, benefit notifications and recovery of
company property) because notices of terminations are routed in advance from
Vana to other connected applications and kept in synch throughout the off-boarding
process. Related processing work for off-boarding employees has been reduced
down to just a few clicks.
Employee self-service has replaced many former HR tasks, streamlining those
processes and improving data accuracy. Furthermore, HR is now less dependent on
IT for business intelligence; user-friendly dashboards give HR the self-sufficiency it
needs to manage reporting and analytics communications to others in the company.
1. Putting strategy before technology is key to success. Pandora put strategy
first, comprehensively identifying its business and IT requirements upfront, and
only then matching vendors to those requirements. Ensuring these strategic drivers
are kept front and center during the vetting process can be challenging in the face
of competing priorities and numerous vendor options, but Pandora remained
focused and selected the best-fit vendor that met not just its initial requirements,
but its long-term strategic objectives.
2. The Vana Workforce offering meets the requirements of fast-growing
companies like Pandora by delivering:
a. Comprehensive functionality supporting the end-to-end workforce
lifecycle, from hire to retire. In addition to automating and consolidating
siloed functions into a single, integrated solution, Pandora now has a master
repository of employee data that can be governed centrally to ensure
ongoing quality and reliability.
b. Affordability and rapid implementation. Research shows that SaaS HCM
implementations are up to 80 percent faster than on-premises HCM
implementations, and require roughly one-fifth the support staff across HR,
© 2013 Constellation Research, Inc. All rights reserved 6IT and consulting functions. These are important factors for high-growth
organizations and those seeking optimization in these areas.
c. Consumer-grade user experience and ease of use. SaaS solutions are
designed to deliver rapid innovations in technology, functionality and user
experience, capitalizing on – rather than being hindered by – the
unprecedented pace of change in today’s business climate. Agile SaaS
solutions like Vana Workforce are well-positioned to deliver the latest in
mobile, social and information-fueled enterprise solutions.
d. Multi-tenant, SaaS infrastructure. The advantages of SaaS are many:
subscription pricing turns capital expenses into operational expenses;
implementations are faster than on-premises; ease of use exceeds that of
legacy applications. True SaaS – where the software architecture is multi-
tenant, and a single code base and data structures are shared by all
customers – brings even greater value to vendors and clients. The greater
value is achieved through economies of scale for lower cost models; faster
innovation delivery; stronger community among customers who are all on
the same version; more frequent and lower-risk upgrades; and improved
security. Many applications will claim to be SaaS, but without multi-tenancy,
they lack the foundation upon which the many benefits of SaaS are based.
e. Ease of integration with existing Salesforce.com CRM environment.
Because Vana Workforce is built on the Force.com platform, it not only
delivers a common user experience but also natively integrates with a valued
business application, Salesforce.com CRM. With this combination,
organizations are able to maximize their investment in CRM while leveraging
a dynamic and centralized workforce platform.
3. An agile, SaaS-based unified HCM platform supported by social and mobile
capabilities is key for long-term success. Pandora employees now have the
tools necessary for engagement, alignment and enablement. Today’s leading SaaS
HCM platforms deliver comprehensive employee lifecycle support; self-service and
social collaboration; mobile accessibility; anytime access to the most up-to-date
data and reporting structures; easy-to-use analytical tools and dashboards;
automated workflows and easy integrations that extend into other enterprise
applications; and more. These attributes and others are all part of the agile HCM
platform sitting at the heart of Pandora’s cloud-based enterprise technology
ecosystem.
Pandora is a prime example of the many stories we encounter at Constellation Research
as businesses unleash the power of emerging and disruptive technologies.
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