Salt River Project streamlines HR and Finance workflows and boosts self-service

Salt River Project (SRP), is a community-based, not-for-profit public power utility and the largest electricity provider in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area, serving about 1.1 million customers. SRP also provides water to about 2.5 million Valley residents. As part of a tech modernization initiative, the organization implemented SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Concur, and Workforce Software to support business-critical workflows across HR, payroll, and finance.

To help employees navigate these systems with confidence, especially for infrequent or complex tasks, SRP implemented WalkMe. With WalkMe, SRP provides real-time, personalized guidance that streamlines onboarding, accelerates self-service process completion rates, and minimizes reliance on support teams. Additionally, SRP can now communicate software and process updates faster than ever before, supporting a culture of continuous improvement.

With strong adoption and expanding use cases, SRP continues to invest in WalkMe to further focus on automation, onboarding, and personalized in-app experiences that meet the evolving needs of its workforce.

As part of a broader transformation initiative, Salt River Project (SRP) rolled out SuccessFactors, Concur, and Workforce Software to support HR, payroll, time and expense reporting, and finance operations for over 5,500 employees. While these systems provided a strong foundation, SRP needed a way to ensure employees could complete tasks independently – particularly those that were infrequent or unfamiliar. For example, many employees only interact with certain systems a few times a year, while others use them almost daily as part of their roles.

“Nearly half of our employees travel infrequently and only need to submit an expense report once or twice a year,” said Drake Winfrey, Senior ERP Analyst. “On the other hand, we have hourly employees – like our field utility crews, linemen, and foreman – who regularly travel to local regions as part of their work.”

With such a wide range of users – from those who rarely interacted with the system to frequent users – SRP recognized that a one-size-fits-all approach to training and communication was ineffective. Employees who rarely needed to complete expense reports or access HR systems often forgot how to complete processes by the time they needed to use them. Meanwhile, frequent users were looking for faster, more efficient ways to complete routine tasks. SRP also wanted a more effective way to communicate time-sensitive updates within applications, rather than relying on mass emails that were often missed or irrelevant to many recipients.

SRP needed a scalable solution that could deliver real-time, in-app guidance and targeted communication to help users’ complete tasks confidently and stay current with ongoing system changes.

SRP deployed WalkMe across SuccessFactors, Concur, and Workforce Software to deliver intuitive, in-the-flow of work guidance for tasks like performance reviews, time and attendance tracking, tax form updates, and expense reporting. For more complex or infrequent activities, such as onboarding new hires or initiating payroll adjustments, WalkMe enables employees to complete processes confidently without referencing job aids or contacting support.

“Managers and staff members need help with frequent as well as occasional tasks,” said Zavala. “With WalkMe, we’re able to deliver employee and manager self-service support like never before.”

WalkMe gives SRP the flexibility to create, test, and deploy new solutions quickly and just as easily remove them when it’s no longer needed. This quick time to deployment ensures that critical process updates reach users when and where they need them. “We prevented a large number of managers from calling our help desk simply by placing one WalkMe solution on the screen,” Zavala said. “We didn’t need to update the system, we triggered a critical communication using an invisible WalkMe launcher.”

“Being able to communicate with the users when they need it, with targeted messaging is key. There’s no delay in the communication – only the time it takes for us to build and publish a WalkMe solution,” added Lisa Day, Senior Manager, Accounts Payable and Payroll.

Automation plays an important role in simplifying user workflows and helping users’ complete tasks independently. In Concur, for example, the SRP team uses WalkMe to populate mileage reimbursements with accurate, SRP policy-compliant inputs. “WalkMe automatically selects the right expense type, fills in the free-entry fields, and moves users through the process,” said Drake Winfrey, Senior ERP Analyst. “From the user’s perspective, it just works – less clicks, less confusion.” By standardizing inputs and reducing user error, these automations help SRP proactively avoid processing delays and prevent downstream rework.

SRP also uses segmentation to tailor guidance by role, system, or user group, which is especially critical for finance and HR workflows. “We have segmentation for managers, hourly vs. salaried users, and even test groups within production,” said Winfrey. “WalkMe enables us to tailor the experience for different roles and quietly validate a change before deploying it organization-wide.”

“WalkMe is our in-app megaphone. It lets us target the right message to the right people at the right time – without overwhelming anyone,” added Zavala.

Finally, WalkMe analytics help SRP monitor engagement and performance, identifying which workflows may need refinement or additional support. These insights help SRP continuously improve its digital adoption solutions and ensure guidance is relevant and effective.

WalkMe has become a key part of SRP’s digital adoption strategy, delivering consistent, intuitive support across its finance and HR systems. By embedding in-system guidance, SRP ensures that employees can complete both routine and infrequent tasks without delays or requiring support team assistance.

This approach to digital adoption has transformed how SRP manages change at scale. “WalkMe enables continuous change by delivering targeted messages precisely where and when they’re needed.,” said Winfrey. “That ability to reach users in the moment with step-by-step navigation and added resources has changed the game for how we manage system updates.”

Speed of execution and the resulting time savings are another major advantage for SRP. “Traditional enablement content – training sessions and detailed job aids – could take us 20 hours or more to create,” said Winfrey. “With WalkMe, we can create and launch solutions that achieve the same goals in a fraction of the time.” One recent example is a digital adoption solution in Concur that guides users through a process change, delivered entirely in-app. What once required days of preparation from enablement teams and hands-on assistance for end users can now be built, tested, and launched in hours – accelerating employee adoption and freeing up all team members to focus on high impact work and strategic initiatives.

With a scalable digital adoption strategy in place, SRP delivers user-friendly experiences for employees across the organization. Looking ahead, the team plans to expand WalkMe to additional workflows and explore new opportunities to automate tasks and simplify processes.