Workday, Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY), a leader in enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, today announced it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the Leaders quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Cloud Core Financial Management Suites for Midsize, Large, and Global Enterprises[1]. Workday was acknowledged as a Leader for the second year in a row and positioned furthest to the right for completeness of vision overall.  

With the demands on finance organisations growing and business leaders increasingly leaning on them to help drive growth, finance leaders need technology systems that enable them to manage risk, identify new opportunities, and keep pace with change. To support its global customers, Workday has continued to expand the depth and breadth of its cloud-based finance system, Workday Financial Management – and in combination with Workday Prism Analytics, Workday Benchmarking, and Workday Planning – is delivering functionality and continued vision that are essential to empowering the future finance function, including:

• More intelligent automation: Workday is continuing to invest in making its financial applications more intelligent with machine learning capabilities to help automate key financial tasks so more time can be spent on value-add projects. For example, using Workday’s customer collections dashboard, a revenue manager can use predictive analytics to determine the likelihood of an invoice being paid on time; or using optical character recognition, an employee can scan receipts using a mobile phone and automatically add items to expense reports.
• More intelligent insights: Workday is investing in advanced financial analytics to provide customers with greater insights. For instance, Workday Prism Analytics will enable a financial planning analyst at a retailer to drill into reports that combine finance data from Workday with data from a point-of-sale system to quickly analyse profitability by store, region, or product line. In addition, Workday’s first data-as-a-service offering, Workday Benchmarking, includes metrics on profit margin percentage and return on invested capital, to help customers better connect workforce metrics to financial success and strategic business goals.
• More intelligent user experiences: With a focus on creating seamless experiences, Workday is investing in making interactions as easy and collaborative as possible. For example, in Workday Planning, users can comment and respond to questions and updates from other planning participants in real time, directly within a Worksheet, a collaborative spreadsheet built directly into the core of Workday’s technology platform. Customers will also be able to interact with Workday through a conversational user interface that enables end users to collaborate and ask questions around specific tasks and flows.

Comment on the news

“We believe Gartner’s recognition of Workday as a Leader in cloud financial management, including our positioning furthest to the right for completeness of vision overall, demonstrates the continuous innovation we deliver to finance teams around the world who are driving their businesses forward with Workday,” said Betsy Bland, vice president, financial management corporate strategy, Workday. “With the increasing pace and demands of business, finance teams require a trusted technology partner that puts the customer at the centre. And Workday does just that with a relentless focus on providing customers with the insights, experience, and agility to meet their present and future finance needs.”