Workday services customers and partners, stay abreast of the innovations at Workday to make the most of your investment

SaaS vendor Workday continues to post impressive growth figures as it helps customers achieve HR and finance transformations. Here we outline a few ways for customers and service providers to capitalize on market opportunities in the year ahead.  

Workday grows more than 30% in fiscal 2018 – and the firm sets its eyes on Europe and Asia for future growth 

Workday posted revenues of $2.82 billion for the fiscal year ending January 31, 2019, an increase of 31.7% from fiscal year 2018. Its fastest growth going forward is in Europe and Asia. According to Aneel Bhusri, co-founder and CEO, Workday has half of the Fortune 50 as customers and approximately 40% of the Fortune 500. Workday has more than 2,800 Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) customers and 725 Workday Financial Management (FM) customers worldwide, and it serves large and medium enterprises. Key to continued growth is a focus on continuous innovation that aligns with enterprises’ changing environments and requirements. To highlight this further, Workday’s gave its flagship Rising event in November 2019 the theme “For a changing world.” 

• Service partner advice: The Workday services practice is often the fastest growing area for Workday service partners. There will be continued opportunities for global and regional service partners worldwide, with both Workday HCM and FM skills. 
• Customer advice: Workday is becoming an established and credible HCM and FM SaaS solution provider. Many large global enterprises have implemented Workday, including some members of its partner ecosystem, such as IBM. Despite it being a relatively young offering, you should evaluate it for SaaS HCM and FM solutions. 

Workday buys procurement platform company Scout RFP to deliver end-to-end offering 

Workday continues to enhance its products’ functionalities, as expected of a software vendor. It claims to spend 30% of revenues on research and development efforts. Workday announced its agreement to acquire the online procurement platform provider Scout RFP in November 2019. Scout RFP was formerly part of the Workday Ventures program. Workday has made several acquisitions, including Adaptive Insights in June 2018 for its planning solution. While acquisitions add valuable functionalities to the core product, Workday is clear that it does not intend to acquire many companies because it wants to preserve “the power of one” of its core product, which essentially means one version of the software. 

• Service partner advice: As the Scout RFP products become generally available, work closely with Workday to understand any additional training requirements to implement and support the Scout ERP solution. 
• Customer advice: Inquire as to how you can benefit from the additional capabilities that the Scout ERP solution brings. 

Workday steps up its ML investments – focusing on employee experience and talent insights 

Workday has developed several machine learning (ML) based solutions. At the Workday Rising Europe event in November 2018, Workday announced the inclusion of ML capabilities in its products, which were mainly powered by IBM Watson. Since then, Workday has developed its ML capabilities, and it’s implementing these in most of its solutions. Examples include: 

• Workday People Experience, a new case management solution for employees and managers, which uses ML and rich media, such as video learning. The solution is live with early adopter clients, and others can opt–in starting Spring 2020.  
• Workday FM products, for example, ML facilitates uploading invoices and routing them to the most qualified person if a human is needed to solve the issue.  
• Workday Skills Insight and Talent Marketplace, Skills Insight provides detailed information about teams’ skills, pulling information from across systems, including performance reviews.  
• Service partner advice: Workday’s ML investments make it easier for clients to position Workday’s solutions in a business context for customers, and you still have opportunities to develop add-on extensions to the core Workday products to differentiate yourself. The Workday Cloud Platform continues to be used by a select group of customers and service providers as Workday perfects the ultimate business model.  
• Customer advice: Ask Workday and your service partner for advice on all new functionalities and developments in the offerings. Workday moves fast with innovation, so don’t stand still, and don’t assume you know the product! 

Workday is laser–focused on customer experience – supported by the announcement of its first chief customer officer

Workday is increasingly focused on customer experience and elevating the value of professional and managed services that its services partners deliver. Customer panel discussions at Rising Europe spoke less about the specific module functionalities and more about the importance of having the assistance of a services partner to achieve a successful deployment. Assistance with change management and release management was top of mind. On November 26, 2019, Workday named Emily McEvilly as its first chief customer officer, heading up the new Customer Experience organization, which will tailor solutions to customers based on specific needs. Workday has received higher than 95% customer satisfaction every year, but it is keen to continue to innovate and strengthen its relationship with all of its customers. 

• Service partner advice: It’s good news that a product vendor has as much focus on customer experience and satisfaction as service partners. Workday already has a representative in all service partner–led engagements through its Delivery Assurance program. Liaise with Workday to understand if there may be more Workday presence in your engagements in the future and if you have any additional expectations and requirements to adhere to. 
• Customer advice: Ask your Workday representatives in your engagement about this increased focus on customer experience. Our experience shows that some customers still don’t quite understand the implications of a Workday deployment. Make sure you can access this assistance with both your service partner and Workday.  

The Bottom Line: Workday goes from strength to strength as it targets Europe and Asia, but can’t get complacent in a highly competitive market. 

Workday is becoming a credible option for enterprises to run their HR and finance functions. It is committed to continuous development using new technologies, and it has customer experience at the heart of its strategy. This presents exciting opportunities for its service partner ecosystem as well as innovative options for customers.  

Service provider partners and customers: Stay abreast of all new developments and always consider the organizational change management issues throughout deployments for success.