Now there’s another starting point on the finance transformation journey for companies that desire to modernize their financial consolidation process along with their planning function. Learn about our new offering.
If you are a finance professional seeking ways to face complexity and change in a world that refuses to stand still, last month’s Workday Rising, our flagship customer conference, was the place to be. Attendees learned how to develop their own roadmap for transforming the finance function and chart their planning journey in an increasingly fast-paced business environment.
In my Workday Rising session, I discussed the new innovations in Workday Adaptive Planning that enhance collaboration across finance and human resources, increase performance, and improve decision-making. I also shared our roadmap and vision for Workday Planning Center, to deliver a centralized way to manage information across multiple planning instances, and for generative artificial intelligence (AI), which brings conversational experiences to Workday Adaptive Planning.
I was especially excited to share that in the first half of 2024, Workday is launching a new combined offering: Workday Adaptive Planning and Consolidation. This unified planning and close and consolidation offering will streamline and simplify data management, the financial close and consolidation process, planning processes, and financial reporting and analytics.
This is particularly important when viewed in the context of finance transformation. Each customer’s transformation journey is unique—and Workday is a partner that supports them wherever they are in that journey. For organizations that are ready for a full finance transformation, we offer a comprehensive solution for the office of the CFO. It includes financial management, close and consolidation, planning, reporting, and analytics. For others that want to start quickly, they can modernize their planning function first, and deploy planning alongside their current enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
Now with Workday Adaptive Planning and Consolidation, we can provide another starting point on the finance transformation journey for organizations that struggle to bring efficiency into their close process, lack collaboration across their entities and teams, and lack visibility—and therefore can’t make an impact on the business.
In terms of the value our customers can expect, this new offering brings together the robust and agile planning of Workday Adaptive Planning with the comprehensive close and consolidation capabilities currently available with Workday Financial Management, a market-leading cloud ERP solution. Workday’s close and consolidation functionality is enterprise-grade, with over 800 customers using it today to simplify complex close processes, eliminate batch processes with automated consolidation tasks, and access real-time financial reports. We are unifying the consolidation and planning processes to accelerate the close, increase planning agility, and drive faster, more informed decisions. And, it establishes a perfect foundation for a full finance transformation in the future.
In the first half of 2024, Workday is launching Workday Adaptive Planning and Consolidation, a new packaged offering that brings together the robust and agile planning of Workday Adaptive Planning and the rich close and consolidation capabilities currently available with Workday Financial Management.
Traditional enterprise performance management vendors use technology that can support either a highly structured group consolidation process or a flexible agile planning process, but not both. Workday Adaptive Planning and Consolidation uniquely delivers purpose-built functionality that addresses the distinctly unique requirements of both processes, resulting in a finance team that isn’t forced to compromise because of technology shortcomings. Financial planning and analysis and accounting teams can access solutions designed to elevate their unique contributions and unite their efforts to better support the business.
Furthermore, our native cloud solution provides continuous access to innovation with machine learning built in. And, as the only performance management solution embedded in an ERP system on the market today, it helps position your organization for an accelerated finance transformation in the future.
To sum up, Workday Adaptive Planning and Consolidation provides more options for customers to choose their finance transformation journey where they can start from planning, planning and consolidation, or full transformation with Workday’s solution for the office of the CFO. When combined with our workforce planning capabilities that uniquely link workforce and financial plans with up-to-date workforce data and related costs, you can spur closer collaboration between finance and HR, driving confident decisions faster than ever across the organization.
We are currently working with selected customers in the early deployment program for this offering. It will be more broadly available in the first half of 2024. Stay tuned here for more information!
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