Workday Named a Leader in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Financial Planning Software for Second Year in a Row

In today’s disruptive business world, effective financial planning and analysis (FP&A) has become a strategic imperative for organizations seeking to succeed amid uncertainty and complexity. No business model works without a strong finance function. And for a modern organization, only a modern, cloud-based planning solution will do.

Workday has been named a Leader in the 2023  Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Financial Planning Software for the second year in a row. We believe this recognition reflects our strong momentum in the market and the value customers gain with Workday Adaptive Planning. 

From my perspective, being named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant underscores our focus on three capabilities: 

Artificial Intelligence

AI is embedded everywhere in everything we do. We know that AI is a major factor in driving the future of work. It’s changed how work gets done, what skills are needed in the workforce, and how decisions are made.

At Workday Rising, our flagship customer event in September, we showcased new generative AI capabilities—that are embedded into the Workday Adaptive Planning architecture—that will allow customers to naturally apply AI as part of their planning process to gain efficiencies and make better decisions, faster. Generative AI is driving the next evolution of the Workday Adaptive Planning platform, leveraging AI capabilities to produce increasingly accurate and predictive plans and enhanced insights, and driving innovation across enterprise planning. 

In addition, users within Workday Adaptive Planning will be able to surface data quickly, uncover contextually relevant insights, and get recommended actions based on those insights—all through text and search language recommended by the system. By simplifying the process of finding and analyzing data in Workday Adaptive Planning, users will be able to make quicker, more strategic decisions about their business.

We expect to begin rolling out these capabilities to customers within the next 6 to 12 months. 

“I think machine learning will transform how we do work. Can’t wait to learn more around the Workday teams building it out,” says Ryan Schlimpert, CIO, Drury Hotels Company, LLC.

Ease of Use

Usability is a key selection criterion of modern planning platforms. Organizations large and small seek to place data access and analytics capabilities directly into the hands of finance teams and business users—to create a world in which the balance of power (when it comes to owning data) shifts from IT to the business.

As a result, using FP&A software shouldn’t require in-depth IT or finance expertise. For organizations to gain an accurate, holistic view of their performance, all users central to the planning, forecasting, and analysis process must embrace the planning solution.

“For us, one of the biggest sellers of the Workday Adaptive Planning platform is that we don’t have to rely on high-priced consultants and, to a much lesser extent, our internal IT teams, to ‘crank the machine,’” says Ryan Amort, director corporate FP&A, Oceaneering International, Inc. “Our team builds the dashboards and the reports and owns the entire process.”  

Data Integration

Naturally, since Adaptive Insights was acquired by Workday in 2018, we’ve tightened our alignment with the Workday suite—and this has introduced an array of opportunities for combining planning with Workday business execution capabilities. At the same time, we integrate with more than 350 other data sources our customers use. We will continue to maintain a systems-agnostic stance today and into the future. This has been a significant part of our long-term strategy that has helped us become a recognized leader in the enterprise performance management industry. Integration with multiple systems is simply the nature of the planning business.

In summary, effective FP&A is crucial for businesses to remain competitive and generate long-term value for all stakeholders. As it  becomes increasingly critical to enterprise success, we plan to ensure that everything we do delivers value and helps customers make planning a strategic part of their business.

Read why we’ve been named a Leader for the second straight year.

_{Gartner Magic Quadrant for Financial Planning Software, Regina Crowder, Matthew Mowrey, Vaughan D Archer, 5 December 2023}

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