Workday in the UK: How We’re Helping Customers Use Uncertainty as a Springboard

It’s a challenging and uncertain time for a lot of businesses in the UK. How is that affecting Workday’s ability to win and retain customers?

In spite of all the uncertainty at the moment, companies are recognising the need to invest. In the first half of last year, we grew 75% year-over-year. It was definitely one of our best years. 

Winning Apex Fund Services was pretty significant. That was one of the largest full-platform deals that we've signed in Workday’s history. And I don't think we’ve had a more textbook win in terms of engagement at all levels of the business; across CEO, CFO, Chief Accounting Officer and CHRO.

That deal followed earlier successes in Financial Services, where we also added Barclays Bank, which was another significant deal. Barclays joins some of the world’s largest banks including Lloyds, Natwest and Santander in the Workday customer community.

In retail we were also really proud to announce that Asda, one of the UK’s largest supermarket chains, has chosen Workday to help accelerate their digital transformation. We will help them to provide a better employee experience to more than 140,000 people working in the UK. 

We’ve also had success in the public sector. At Elevate, we were fortunate to be joined on stage by Doug Ward from Innovate UK. They’ve actually been a Workday Financials and HCM customer for some time and recently added Workday Payroll. The Financial Ombudsman Service also went live at the end of 2021 on Workday Financials and HCM. And last year we won the National Archive and the Food Standards Agency, so we’re seeing really good momentum in the public sector.    

In terms of what you’re hearing from customers and prospects, what’s happening in the market and how are organisations responding to that? 

Companies that are trying to innovate, to stay ahead and keep an advantage over their competitors, they're leaning towards us and have been for a while. The smart ones know that investing in a downturn is going to catapult them out in front of their competitors. 

But here's the thing: on that front, our competitors say the same things that we do. But we're showing that we're the ones that have delivered and will continue to deliver for our customers. Speed-to-value is critical and we're not only dealing with fast-moving tech companies. We're bringing on manufacturers. We're bringing on retailers. We're bringing on law firms, which are notoriously difficult to bring on. We're getting a lot of large enterprises.

Why are those companies choosing Workday and how important is speed-to-value?

We're doing a better job than our competitors on execution, and we're playing to our strengths in that area. Ninety-five percent of our customers during COVID went live on time, on budget, in a 100% virtual deployment setting. We actually improved during COVID. So we can say to prospects, "Alright, you're a changemaker, you want to make this investment. We can show you that Workday is not only better and different to what else is on the market, but you can also be confident that you're going to get live on time, on budget and have an ownership model that is lower-cost and more efficient. AND you're investing in an appreciating asset.”  

When you look at competitor deployments: even if they go live on time and on budget – and our competitors don't have a great track record there – they always have this huge wane in adoption and then a growing cost of ownership when it comes to running the system. That's not our model.

How do you think the next year will go? 

Consistent. We're not being naive when it comes to the macroeconomic conditions that we're already in. We can't influence that. What we can influence is how we're servicing our existing customers and helping them get the most out of their service, which we are. We are at 97.8% customer satisfaction in EMEA which is phenomenal.

It hasn't been that level forever. So through COVID, through all the turmoil we’ve seen in recent years, our customer satisfaction has improved. Through all of that, our on time, on budget delivery has improved. Our renewal rate is fantastic and customers aren’t just renewing they're adding to their subscription. We're creating demand based on their need, and they're buying more software, because they’re seeing the value Workday brings to their organisations. 

It’s a tough time for attracting and retaining talent and yet Workday has grown considerably over the last year. How are you approaching the battle for talent? 

We're doing a pretty good job. We’ve grown considerably in the UK over recent years, in part because of the Peakon acquisition. But we're also attracting really smart, capable, gritty people. We're looking beyond the traditional profile - people who have worked in enterprise software for years. Instead, we're looking for intelligence, grit, attention to detail; people who are highly collaborative, good facilitators, and orchestrators of extended teams. We've expanded our profile. 

We've also more than doubled the number of female employees in the UK so we’re improving the diversity of the team, which in turn improves strength and resilience. And that's been a very concerted effort.

We're not just focused on getting the best talent, we’re also working hard to create a really good environment for everyone. We have, I think, amongst the highest engagement in the company right now, which we have to sustain.