What are my top 3 takeaways of the release?
‘True’ Analytics (more here) see the light of day – Last year Workday committed pretty much all of their roadmap of new announcements from their Rising conference to (‘true’) analytics. The vendor announced 3 Finance and 3 HCM analytical applications, that Workday calls Insight Applications. With Workday 24 the vendor makes good on its roadmap, tackling the very common area of Retention / Flight Risk. Pretty much all major HCM vendors now have analytical models to predict flight risk – so it is good to see that Workday has equally released / shipped that capability. Now it is all up to hearing from the first customer how well these retention analytics work. Looking forward to hear more. Moreover it is good to see that Workday now strikes the right balance between visualization, reporting, analysis and analytics – as all have their place in a modern 21st century application, but it is good to see Workday getting the definitions right and helping to reduce the confusion too many vendor marketers have created around the ‘analytics’ term.
‘True’ Analytics (more here) see the light of day – Last year Workday committed pretty much all of their roadmap of new announcements from their Rising conference to (‘true’) analytics. The vendor announced 3 Finance and 3 HCM analytical applications, that Workday calls Insight Applications. With Workday 24 the vendor makes good on its roadmap, tackling the very common area of Retention / Flight Risk. Pretty much all major HCM vendors now have analytical models to predict flight risk – so it is good to see that Workday has equally released / shipped that capability. Now it is all up to hearing from the first customer how well these retention analytics work. Looking forward to hear more. Moreover it is good to see that Workday now strikes the right balance between visualization, reporting, analysis and analytics – as all have their place in a modern 21st century application, but it is good to see Workday getting the definitions right and helping to reduce the confusion too many vendor marketers have created around the ‘analytics’ term.
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| Screenshot showing Retention Analytics |
Professional Service Automation – PSA – sees the light of day, too – So far vertical offerings at Workday – apart from Workday Student – have not been broken out into separate products – PSA is now the first complete vertical offering that combines key capabilities of HCM and Finance in a new offering that looks functional rich and attractive for a first version. It is good to see that Workday re-uses and leverages assets and creates more value for its (numerous) professional services customers. Anyone having run a professional services team knows that Microsoft Excel is the band-aid that keeps these organizations going – so it is good to see a vendor offering putting (hopefully) and end to tedious and error prone workarounds.
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| Screenshot of PSA Dashboard |
A function-rich release – I have been critical of Workday for – what it looks from the outside – slowing down the functional richness of its releases over time. Workday 22 and now Workday 24 are a departure from that trend, so it is good to see that with Recruiting, Insight Applications and the new PSA product, Workday is delivering major new functionality beyond architecture and user interface. As mentioned earlier – tough to measure from the outside what really a number of x enhancements means.
Update 15 | Update 16 | Update 17 | Update 18 | Update 19 | Update 20 | Update 21 | Worday 22 | Workday 24 |
October 2011 | April 2012 | August 2012 | November 2012 | April 2013 | September 2013 | January 2014 | May 2014 | April 2015 |
User Experience - Outlook Integration - Chatter Integration | Mobility HTML5 Support for non IOS devices | Mobility - New modules - Global Support | Workforce Engagement: Team Profile Professional Profile | Headcount Planning | Big Data Analytics | New User Interface for browser | New Process Framework | An Intelligent Foundation for Analytics 1st Insight App New Android Look & Feel |
Talent Management - Talent Reviews - Career Interests - Cornerstone Integration | Onboarding | Time Tracking | Performance Management Enhancements | Android Native Support & iOS Mobile Enhancements | User Experience - Configurable Grids for Compensation | Performance Management across browser and mobile | Recruiting Travel Connector rids for Compensation | Retention Insight App Talent Insights Professional Services Automation (PSA) |
Payroll - Payroll for Canada - Payroll Connector | Usability Enhancements | Custom Fields | More custom fields | Mobility - Notbooks for iPad | Legislative support - Report for ACA / RUP | Collective Bargain Agreements | Improved Time Tracking | |
Higher Education Functionality | 170 Enhancements | 207 Features / 80 Brainstorm Items | 246 Features / 67 Brainstorm Items | 347 Features / 68 Customer Requests | 30% of Features from Brainstorm Items |
MyPOV
Always good to see vendors making good on their roadmap announcements and good to see Workday delivering a function-rich Workday 24 release. There is also a commercial aspect with the release – as it marks the end of the ‘all included’ era for Workday – remarkably, the vendor has been able to keep this up for its first 10 years. And the Insight Applications can create enough value for enterprises to justify this – but it is a first for customers and a first for the Workday salesforce, so an area to watch.2015 is also the year the Workday Payroll for the UK is released. It wasn’t part of the Workday 24 announcements this week – but there are still plenty of days left in this year for Workday to make that milestone – in my view a key one to track.
And on the adoption side of new functionality, as customers are live on the software, now it comes to see how well they are using the new functionalities and how successful they are with them. The very nature of analytical applications makes the ‘does it work’ question harder for all players involved – as you need to have historic data – or start collecting data to see if the predictions, recommendations and actions really move the needle for enterprises as desired, designed and expected. We will be watching closely.
More on Workday
- First Take - Top 3 Takeaways from of Workday Rising Day 1 Keynote - The dawn of the analytics era - time to deliver Insight Apps - read here
- Progress Report - Workday supports more cloud standard - but work remains - read here
- Workday 22 - Recruiting and rich Workday 22 are here - read here
- First Take - Why Workday acquired Identified - (real) Analytics matter - read here
- Workday Update 21 - All about the user experience and some more - read here
- Workday Update 20 - Mostly a technology release - read here
- Takeaways from the Salesforce.com and Workday parnership - read here
- Workday powers on - adds more to its plate - read here
- What I would like Workday to address this Rising - read here
- Workday Update 19 - you need to slow down to hurry up - read here
- I am worried about... Workday - read here
