Workday

Workday ERP

WHAT IS WORKDAY ERP?

Workday is an American software vendor that develops financial management, spend management and human capital management Cloud ERP software of the same name. Initially the solution targeted only the human capital management (HCM) space but has acquired and developed more functionality, turning it into a wider set of tools and is now commonly referred to as an ERP system.

With its roots in human capital management, Workdays unique selling point as an ERP system is its focus on people and tight integration between business functions. As a result, the solution is known for its ease of use and its people centric approach, ranging from the solution capabilities through to the Workday corporate identity and corporate social responsibility.

Workday is a young solution but in a short space of time, it has quickly become very popular and won over large enterprise customers from other enterprise software vendors such as SAP, Oracle & Microsoft. Today, Workday customers include many of the Fortune 1000 and the company is also known to have a very high implementation success rate. Due to the popularity of Workday however, the market for Workday consultants and talent has become somewhat constricted so fame and fortune has certainly come at a price.

The functionality offered by Workday ERP started with people centric processes and business functions, but has now developed to include financial management, spend management, business analytics and integration. However, the solution is still lacking in many supply chain related areas and in supply chain focussed industries such as manufacturing, distribution and so on, it tends to lose out to mature competitors such as Oracle, SAP & Microsoft or niche players. As such, Workday ERP has seen most of its success in people and project centric organizations, including professional services, creative industries, high tech, healthcare and more. With that said, many organizations with heavy supply chain processes still use Workday for its human capital management functionality, rather than as an end to end ERP solution. According to the official Workday website, customers include organizations such as Accenture, Aldi, Levi & Strauss, Airbus, Puma, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Comcast and many more.

Furthermore, Workday customers do tend to be on the larger side, typically with a minimum of 500 employees and as such there can be a significant cost barrier to entry.

Modules & Features List

Financial Management & Accounting

Workday offers financial management and accounting capabilities which include:

• Accounts receivable
• Accounts payable
• General ledger
• Fixed assets
• Financial consolidation
• Revenue management
• Intercompany financials
• Budgeting
• Multichart of accounts
• Multi-GAAP
• Global Tax Engine
• Fixed Assets

Financial management within Workday offers an intuitive experience for managing disparate organizations. Workday allows for multi-entity, multilanguage and multibook operations providing analytics and transactional drill down for accounting analysis. The solution allows global organizations to meet reporting and regulatory compliance plus offers many opportunities for automation.

Workday leverages machine learning across the platform, but particularly in finance to enable your organization to automate financial management processes. For example, financial closing can be accelerated with anomaly detection.

Workday finance also provides easy to use tools for audit, allowing you to track and log changes within the system by user. These tools are natively built into the application.

Finance users can also easily integrate with several bank accounts and perform simple accounts reconcilliations processes.

Spend Management

Workday Spend Management comprises of four key areas:

• Strategic sourcing
• Procure to pay
• Inventory
• Expenses Management

Workday strategic sourcing allows you to launch sourcing events across your business easily using forms capabilities and allows for you to quickly launch RFI, RFP and RFQ processes. These includes sourcing questionnaires and pricing sheets, enabling you to easily collaborate with suppliers.

You can also use reverse auctions and the ability to manage your contracts in one single location. This allows you to automate purchase order creation and more.

Workday procure to pay allows for easy management of your organizations indirect spend.  This gives your suppliers their own portal into your system, allowing them to see their open and closed purchase orders plus open RFI, RFP & RFQs. Your suppliers can also settle their own paperwork, automating your invoicing processes.

Purchasing

The Purchasing module manages the whole purchasing process, from requisition to receipt regardless of purchase type, whether this is for materials, services or capital items.

Requisition quotes can be generated through the browser by employees across the whole of the organization, or limited based on approvals, and similar rules can be generated to ensure purchase approvals are based on a pre-defined hierarchy. Once a quote has been received, approvals can given to authorize and create a purchase order online. The entirety of the purchasing process is moved online, automated and maintained through a number of system-generated notifications and alerts through the workflow.

As Purchasing is integrated with the other modules, expenses that are project related can quickly be coded, ensuring that the entirety of projects costs are understood and applied and can be compared against the budgeted costs at all times. The module automatically creates accounts payable transactions, updating the general ledger.

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Workday HCM vs Workday Financial Management

Workday is known for two core platforms, and it is important to understand the distinction:

Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) is Workday's flagship product and market leader in cloud HCM. It covers core HR, payroll, talent management, workforce planning, learning and analytics. Many large enterprises use Workday HCM even when they use a different ERP for financials and operations.

Workday Financial Management provides general ledger, AP/AR, revenue management, grants management, spend management and financial planning. It is less mature than the HCM platform but is growing rapidly, particularly among services-centric organisations that value tight integration between people data and financial data.

Service-Centric Organisation Fit Guide

Workday is best suited for organisations where people are the primary asset, not physical products or inventory. Ideal fits include:

• Professional services firms — consulting, accounting, legal, IT services
• Technology and SaaS companies — software, cloud services, high-tech
• Healthcare systems — hospitals, health networks, insurance
• Higher education — universities, research institutions
• Financial services — banking, insurance, asset management
• Media and entertainment — creative agencies, broadcasting, gaming

Workday is not a good fit for:

• Manufacturing companies needing MRP, shop floor control or supply chain management
• Wholesale distribution businesses requiring warehouse management
• Retail companies needing POS or inventory management
• Any organisation where physical goods movement is a core process

For these use cases, consider SAP S/4HANA, Oracle ERP Cloud, NetSuite or Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Workday Implementation Complexity

Workday implementations are more structured than many ERP platforms:

• Timeline: 6–12 months for HCM, 9–18 months for Financial Management, 12–24 months for both
• Methodology: Workday uses its proprietary deployment methodology with mandatory checkpoints
• Delivery Assurance: Workday maintains oversight of every implementation through its three-way engagement model
• Partner Ecosystem: Deloitte, PwC, Accenture, IBM, Collaborative Solutions and other certified partners
• Cost: Implementation typically costs 1–3x the annual subscription, ranging from $500K to $5M+ for large enterprises

Workday Pros & Cons

Pros:

• Wide and deep functionality across many key business areas.
• Heavily designed for the Professional services and project based organizations.
• Enables in depth project based analysis on financials, performance, utilization and revenue.
• Supports the launch of targeted marketing campaigns for organizations who need to win project work.
• Automates many aspects of the proposal process.

Cons:

• Not suitable for organizations that are outside the Professional Services / project driven environments.
• All modules come as standard and pricing is based on this, so pricey for those who do not require all the functionality provided by the modules.

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Industry Fit

Workday is used by companies in various industries, including:

Professional Services

High Tech & Software

Gaming

Legal & Law Firms

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History

Workday was formed by former executives from Oracle Peoplesoft in 2005. The product was launched in 2006, initially only providing human resources management capabilities. It soon started to also provider wider capabilities including financial management. Workday has made a number of acquisitions including ScoutRFP, Peakon, Adaptive Insights, VNDLY and more which augment its human resources management, procurement, financial management and accounting as well as analytics capabilities. Workday IPO'd in 2012.

Workday Deployment Options

Workday is offered only as a Cloud ERP solution, in a true Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. Workday ERP includes all software licensing, maintenance and hosting in one subscription cost which is predominantly based on user licenses.

Workday cannot be purchased as a perpetual license or On-Premise solution.

Learn about Workday implementation here.

Workday Implementation

Implementation of Workday ERP is carried out by its own services organization, but increasingly by its partner ecosystem, including companies such as Deloitte, PwC, IBM, Accenture, CapGemini, DXC Technology, and NGA Human Resources plus many more. Workday claims that over 70% of customers go-live on average and every customer recieves Workday 'delivery assurance' which ensures a tri-party engagement between Workday, your implementation partner and customer. With this offering, Workday maintains touch points throughout the implementation process, overseeing and guiding planning, configuration, testing and deployment.

Workday Integration & APIs

Workday provides a comprehensive set of web service APIs covering key business areas including Financial Management, Human Resources, Payroll, Recruiting, Compensation, Benefits Administration, Time Tracking, Learning, Professional Services Automation, Revenue Management, Resource Management, and more. These APIs enable integration with third-party systems for data exchange and process automation.

Workday ERP Competitors

• Oracle NetSuite
• SAP S/4 HANA
• FinancialForce
• Unit4

Workday ERP Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

How much does Workday cost?

Workday ERP bears the typical costs of ERP implementation including software licensing, software support and ERP implementation.

As Workday is only available as a Cloud solution, this ERP software is paid for on a subscription basis.

Is Workday SaaS?

Workday is only provided as a Cloud ERP solution or Software-as-a-Service solution. This means that Workday ERP licensing includes the software licensing, maintenance, hosting and product support in one subscription cost.

Is Workday an ERP?

Workday started as a human capital management (HCM) platform in 2005, but it has evolved into what is now widely considered an ERP system for service-centric organisations. Workday today covers financial management, spend management, professional services automation, planning and analytics alongside its core HCM capabilities.

However, Workday still lacks the supply chain, manufacturing, warehouse management and inventory modules found in traditional ERP systems like SAP S/4HANA, Oracle ERP Cloud and Microsoft Dynamics 365. For organisations where people and projects are the primary resources — such as professional services firms, technology companies, healthcare systems and higher education — Workday functions as a full ERP. For manufacturing, distribution and retail businesses that depend on physical goods movement, Workday is best used as an HCM complement to a supply-chain-focused ERP rather than as a standalone enterprise resource planning solution.

In short: yes, Workday is an ERP for finance and people-centric organisations, but no if your definition of ERP requires supply chain depth.