December 16th, 2008
Workday - Where HR and Finance Do More than Interface
Workday update
Workday hosted a conference call for the Enterprise Irregulars bloggers recently. The firm was announcing a number of functional enhancements to their integrated Finance and HR product line.
What did we learn?
The company now has 67 customers including well-known, large firms: Flextronics (200,000 employees) and Life Time Fitness (Workday’s first publicly traded Financials module client). 35+ customers are in production status.
Workday has experienced 100% year over year growth in bookings. We received no guidance regarding future bookings in the forthcoming (and economically depressing) year.
The company has completed its SAS 70 Type II audit and has received its Safe Harbor certificate.
Functionality is being expanded on several fronts:
- Worker Spend Management – This is an integrated bundle of functionality that includes HR and Finance capabilities. It is a separately priced module that users setup via a configuration utility. The application has a number of very interesting analytic/query capabilities based on the data derived from the provisioning of new employees and the tracking of employee spend.
- Merit Pay – The HR functionality has now received extended compensation functionality. Merit pay processes and functionality are materially enhanced. Next year, Workday will deliver additional functionality to support bonus and stock option handling. (Given the current economy, they won’t need to rush this capability to market).
- Enhanced Spend Management – The Workday solution now has an integrated workflow, requisition and spend management capability.
- Employee Cost Burden – I can really relate to this one. When firms are budgeting for projects, departments, etc., they will invariably need to know how much specific personnel will cost at a fully burdened rate (i.e., a rate that includes salary, benefits, employer contributions to retirement, health care, etc.). For most executives doing budgets (or project estimates), a SWAG is about as good as it gets. This solution puts a much finer number together for these plans.
- A number of new functional enhancements in the Finance modules are being developed/rolled out. This include: 1099 processing, banking/cash settlement, a single payment engine (for AP and Payroll), and many more.
Overall, Workday is attempting to build a people-based ‘system of record’. They see their system as empowering HR leaders in ways other products do not. They believe their system will resonate with HR executives who:
- want a seat at the executive committee
- want an integrated HR and expense management solution
- want control over all employee facing functions, systems, etc.
Workday personnel are seeing more IT executives involved in their deals. This is due to the broader nature of their suite (it no longer is restricted to HR) and to the growing global nature of their solutions. I would add it is a natural outgrowth of Workday moving more and more up-market.
This blog explores the intersection set between services and technology. If it impacts either space, it will be covered here. Brian Sommer is a former Accenture partner. He did an 18-year tour of duty there and ran three small practice units (Finance Center of Excellence, HR Center of Excellence and Software Intelligence). He’s sold service projects in almost every continent and remains just as current on both services and technology today as ever before. Brian is currently CEO of TechVentive, a strategy consultancy servicing technology providers, and a research analyst with Vital Analysis. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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