It’s that time of year again, when many clients are in phase 0 or what Forrester calls a pre-RFP assessment period of strategically planning of what to do with their legacy enterprise HCM and Finance applications or contemplating massive HR and Finance operations transformation, we highly encourage all LE and ME organizations to read our new Workday Services Landscape, Q4 2023 report. We thank all the services providers who participated in this research with us in Q3 and Q4 of 2023. This detailed evaluative and primary research takes a deep dive into what has changed in the Workday Services provider landscape in the last 2 years and who are the new set of providers to consider. Whether you want to consider a large sized SI or a boutique firm, we take a look at 27 notable Workday-certified providers who offer Workday services be it strategy/business consulting, implementation or AMS.
The reports looks at where the current market maturity lies, key market dynamics, what’s trending, challenges and what the disruptors are. In addition to the geographic and industry focus for each provider, you will also get an understanding of the current core and extended business scenarios in the Workday market. Workday buyers contemplating RFPs for SI selection need to take a look at this section to understand which SI truly brings in offerings in these extended scenarios as that sets the SIs apart and may factor into your RFP process.
Some things to consider:
- Twinning of HCM and Finance – While Workday HCM is well known to be one of the dominant players in the cloud HCM market, the last couple of years has seen a dramatic increase in adoption of Workday Finance and especially Workday full platform deals. Full platform mainly indicates adopting and implementing Workday HCM, Finance, Adaptive, Prism and Reporting and sometimes more capabilities at the same time – mostly HCM and Finance always included in full platform deals. This is definitely factoring into the increase in more organizations moving from old on-premises to a true Cloud ERP.
- Financial Services industry – namely Banking and Insurance – is seeing a Workday Finance adoption or full platform adoption at a rapid rate. Needless to say, you need to understand then who are the best SIs that can successfully do a full platform execution well. For decades many Financial Services companies relied on old and clunky legacy ERP and other supporting finance software. COBOL ring a bell? While considering a SaaS model for HCM is a much easier sell, Cloud ERP or SaaS software for Finance industry is a completely different world. Risk tolerance is very low and demand for accuracy and performance is very high. For many in this industry taking that transformative jump to the SaaS model brought in speed, agility never seen before. Only some SIs are the right partners for full platform Workday deals. There is also heavy Workday activity in ME sized FS areas such as local banks and credit unions.
- Healthcare – This is one area where Workday full platform deals are the most popular with Workday HCM, Finance, SCM completely taking over the old PeopleSoft and Lawson market. Workday invested heavily in making a big push in the healthcare industry adoption of Workday products and those results are showing in both LE and ME healthcare clients.
- Public Sector – Many public sector clients have been on old legacy software for both HCM and Finance for 15+ years or more on average. Government clients have greatly loosened up their restrictions on SaaS adoption and with that it is no surprise that many government clients looking to do the next ERP or HCM upgrade are looking to go full SaaS and Workday is a perfect poster child for them. It is a popular option with US SLED (state, county, city, districts and higher ed). It is to be noted that the government space is also actually seeing a lot of full platform Workday deals and SIs are busy in this space bringing in 1 platform for both HR and ERP transformation. With Workday now FedRAMP certified look for my further analysis in 2024 on notable Workday HCM projects at US federal agencies.
The report goes more in depth on many key factors shining a light on additional capabilities. If you are considering moving to Workday products and embarking on an implementation project or preparing to set out a Workday implementation RFI or RFP be it for Workday HCM, Finance, full platform, Adaptive, Prism, Extend, PSA, Student Management or more – definitely take the time to read this landscape report – The Workday Services Landscape, Q4 2023.
Additionally, watch out for the new Workday Services Wave coming in Q2 of 2024 – which further down selects top Services providers / SIs in this space and delves deeper into which SIs are suitable across several key criteria critical to your evaluation in the RFP process.
If you have any further questions or need additional insights about Workday Products and Services Providers in association with this research, please feel free to book time with me here.
