We had the opportunity to attend the North American edition of the Workday user conference, held in Chicago from October 9th till12th 2017 at McCormick place. The event was very well attended (almost 9k attendees) across customers, prospects, partners and influencers.
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Here is the 1 slide condensation (if the slide doesn’t show up, check here):
Want to read on? Here you go:
People Experience– Workday is unveiling a new, open portal that will allow its customers not only to expose Workday information, but also 3rd party / partner information via REST APIs. A good move, that may give the HR system another shot at becoming truly the all-encompassing employee directory (something the overall industry has by large failed at).
Platform functionality push– Workday is extending its platform capabilities. No surprise – there is Workday Voice – the vendor’s approach to voice recognition. Unfortunately, not show, but vendor independence is the architecture design point a good true north. Workday Bot powers the chat or voice conversations. And Prism analytics, powered by Platfora software and know how assets has gone live for some and in beta for some other capabilities. Finally, Workday Benchmarking has gone GA a few weeks before Rising.
Progress in Learning and overall in Talent Management – Learning was the latest addition to the Workday Talent Management capabilities – and it is seeing good customer adoption with about 200 customers having purchased, implementing or being live on it. And Workday is bringing all of Talent Management together with a concept of development journeys – an interesting approach to make Talent Management really work from a talent augmentation and career perspective.
Workday Cloud Platform– Already mentioned at the recent Workday partner event, Workday also shared its PaaS plans at Rising. It is early days, with 30 services available and a little more than a handful of customers in beta. That will change in 2018 with more early adopters building use cases with Workday Cloud Platform. An interesting takeaway from the executive Q&A was that ISV uptake is expected in a year from now.
On the concern side, Workday has a lot on its hands. On top of the all the above mentioned innovation, it also is running its first AWS based data center in Montreal, and moving to a more modern container based architecture (Kubernetes). That is a lot to do, but it is key for Workday to provide all of this innovation to remain in a good place when it comes to the newer technologies and platforms. The good news is, that Workday moves to a more commonly understood (and accepted) operating model for SaaS vendors, that should help the vendor reduce its capital expenditures in data centers and that are hopefully invested into new SaaS capabilities. And Workday has a good track record to deliver what it puts on the roadmap.
Overall Workday is moving in the right direction, I’d like to see it move a little faster, but customers will be in good shape as long as Workday delivers on the platform, architecture and functionality capabilities it has announced and shared at Rising. CxOs making decision should practice the usual caution as with all new products – minimum required capabilities, commercial implications, and roadmap are a few prominent considerations to mention. Stay tuned.
Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here). There is a total of four Storifys - below is the executive keynote. You can find the Friday keynote here, and takeaways from the Q&A with Bhusri and executive round tables here (very interesting).
Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.
Before reading - check out this video my colleague Chris Kanaracus and me recorded on the way to O'Hare:
Here is the 1 slide condensation (if the slide doesn’t show up, check here):
Want to read on? Here you go:
People Experience– Workday is unveiling a new, open portal that will allow its customers not only to expose Workday information, but also 3rd party / partner information via REST APIs. A good move, that may give the HR system another shot at becoming truly the all-encompassing employee directory (something the overall industry has by large failed at).
 |
| Duffield and Bhusri on the Power of 1 |
Platform functionality push– Workday is extending its platform capabilities. No surprise – there is Workday Voice – the vendor’s approach to voice recognition. Unfortunately, not show, but vendor independence is the architecture design point a good true north. Workday Bot powers the chat or voice conversations. And Prism analytics, powered by Platfora software and know how assets has gone live for some and in beta for some other capabilities. Finally, Workday Benchmarking has gone GA a few weeks before Rising.
 |
| Workday People Experience [Portal] |
Progress in Learning and overall in Talent Management – Learning was the latest addition to the Workday Talent Management capabilities – and it is seeing good customer adoption with about 200 customers having purchased, implementing or being live on it. And Workday is bringing all of Talent Management together with a concept of development journeys – an interesting approach to make Talent Management really work from a talent augmentation and career perspective.
 |
| Workday Cloud Platform |
Workday Cloud Platform– Already mentioned at the recent Workday partner event, Workday also shared its PaaS plans at Rising. It is early days, with 30 services available and a little more than a handful of customers in beta. That will change in 2018 with more early adopters building use cases with Workday Cloud Platform. An interesting takeaway from the executive Q&A was that ISV uptake is expected in a year from now.
MyPOV
A good Rising for Workday customer. record attendance with 8500 participants always give a ‘natural’ adrenaline rush to all who made it to McCormick. And Workday is broadly pushing functionality in its core products, but also adding key platform capabilities with PaaS, DaaS and the Prism analytics. Workday Voice and Workday Bot are changing the user experience in the right direction. Unfortunately, it did no keynote time – after being featured prominently a year ago.On the concern side, Workday has a lot on its hands. On top of the all the above mentioned innovation, it also is running its first AWS based data center in Montreal, and moving to a more modern container based architecture (Kubernetes). That is a lot to do, but it is key for Workday to provide all of this innovation to remain in a good place when it comes to the newer technologies and platforms. The good news is, that Workday moves to a more commonly understood (and accepted) operating model for SaaS vendors, that should help the vendor reduce its capital expenditures in data centers and that are hopefully invested into new SaaS capabilities. And Workday has a good track record to deliver what it puts on the roadmap.
Overall Workday is moving in the right direction, I’d like to see it move a little faster, but customers will be in good shape as long as Workday delivers on the platform, architecture and functionality capabilities it has announced and shared at Rising. CxOs making decision should practice the usual caution as with all new products – minimum required capabilities, commercial implications, and roadmap are a few prominent considerations to mention. Stay tuned.
Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here). There is a total of four Storifys - below is the executive keynote. You can find the Friday keynote here, and takeaways from the Q&A with Bhusri and executive round tables here (very interesting).
More on Workday
- Summer 2017 News Analysis - Workday announces its PaaS - read here
- News Analysis - Workday, IBM Form Strategic Partnership on the IBM Cloud - The IaaS vendor race for SaaS load is on - read here
- News Analysis - Workday Delivers Payroll for France Customers - read here
- Progress Report - Workday Tech Summit - Good Progress, More Insights, Less Concerns - read here
- News Analysis - Workday and ADP partner to Deliver a Seamless Customer Experience for Global Payroll - read here
- Event Report - Workday Rising - Learning is there and good housekeeping - read here
- News Analysis - Workday completes Talent Management with Learning - Finally - or too late? Read here.
- Event Preview - What I would like Workday to address this Rising read here
- News Analysis – Workday to Expand Suite of Applications for Healthcare Industry - with a SCM twist - read here
- News Analysis - Workday supports UK Payroll - now speaks (British English) Payroll - read here
- Workday 24 - 'True' Analytics, a Vertical and more - now needs customer proof points - read here
- 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
Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.