#In321 with Karen Beaman, CEO and Global Strategic Advisor, Jeitosa Group International
1. Karen, a lot of thought went into the company name, Jeitosa. Can you tell us what it means and why you selected it?
Jeitosa is a Brazilian Portuguese word that means creative, agile, solution-oriented. Years ago, when I was doing a lot of work for my company's Brazilian subsidiary in São Paulo, whenever they would present a problem and I would suggest a solution, they would say to me "multo jeitosa, muito jeitosa," meaning "very creative, very creative." It is my belief and expectation that all of our consultants be creative and solution-oriented in solving problems for our clients. So that's why the name so aptly describes our a global approach to our consulting work.
2. You have a long-standing association with IHRIM, having been editor-in-chief of the IHRIM Journal, winner of the IHRIM Summit Award and frequent presenter. What distinguishes IHRIM from other associations in the HCM category?
Associations play an important role in our industry – even in this age of social networking. They're dedicated to education, and in the case of IHRIM, specifically educating HR Tech professionals. The quality of information being exchanged about HR systems within IHRIM and other associations is invaluable to all of us in the industry.
3. Whenever HR professionals think Jeitosa, they also think Workday. Tell us about the evolution of your company’s work with Workday and how you’re helping your clients optimize their Workday investment.
We've been working with Workday since their inception, before they were even called Workday. Dave Duffield asked us to work with them by designing the global core of their new system. Working in a global team, we led the development of the requirements for Workday's global Person model, global Staffing model, global Compensation model, and global Organization model. Subsequently, we became Workday's first implementation partner and 24th client (we run both Workday HCM and Financials in a production environment). We have over 100 Workday certifications covering all of their products and have now worked with over 80 of their customers, including full implementations, phase 2 deployments, global roll-outs and ongoing production support.