It was mid-2008 when I sat through my first demonstration of Workday Human Capital Management as an analyst covering the industry. I was curious what was going on with this company, given the pedigree of the leadership team and Workday's purist approach to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for core administrative systems.
It was mid-2008 when I sat through my first demonstration of Workday Human Capital Management as an analyst covering the industry. I was curious what was going on with this company, given the pedigree of the leadership team and Workday’s purist approach to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for core administrative systems.
During the briefing, I learned that Workday was completely modernizing and future-proofing core human resources in the cloud for large, global enterprises. I also learned it was building Payroll and a full Financial Management suite in the cloud—an extraordinarily bold strategy. I was blown away by the overall product roadmap. Meanwhile, large enterprises were taking notice of Workday and the value of its SaaS-based HR solutions, with Chiquita, Flextronics, and others already committing to large global deployments of Workday.
In October 2008, Forrester Research, Inc. released “The Forrester Wave™: Human Resource Management Systems, Q4 2008.” Workday was cited in the report as “an innovative new player” and categorized as a “strong performer.” Given the stage of Workday’s build-out and the study’s formal evaluation criteria, the legacy ERP providers of HRMS software were ahead of Workday, holding leadership positions in the report’s findings. Yet, things were about to be seriously shaken up, and that seemed to come through in the analyst/author’s summary (at least to me).
A few months later, something wonderful and unexpected happened—I was offered a job to join the Workday Product Strategy team. It was a chance to work with a team that shared my vision, passion, and hunger to create the gold standard in unified HCM and talent applications.
Fast forward just a little over three years, and we at Workday are honored to receive what we consider to be an envious spot in the “Leaders” category in, “The Forrester Wave™: Human Resource Management Systems, Q1 2012.” While I think Workday’s movement into the leaders spot says a lot about what we’ve been able to accomplish here, it equally reflects what the marketplace now expects of an HR industry leader—things such as a strong HR core with integrated talent management capabilities, embedded analytics, manager and employee self-service, a solid technology strategy and vision, and most importantly, a great customer experience.
If you’re interested in learning more about the latest Forrester Wave, please join a March 27 Webinar featuring Paul Hamerman, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research, and Amy Wilson, VP of HCM product strategy at Workday. Paul and Amy will discuss industry trends, HRMS criteria and assessment within the Forrester Wave Report, and why closely evaluating your HRMS strategy is a necessity in this evolving market.
We are extraordinarily grateful to be included as a leader in the Forrester Wave. More importantly, we are honored to have a supportive customer community—including more than 280 large and medium-sized enterprises—that is committed to our shared success.
The Forrester Wave™ is copyrighted by Forrester Research, Inc. Forrester and Forrester Wave™ are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. The Forrester Wave™ is a graphical representation of Forrester’s call on a market and is plotted using a detailed spreadsheet with exposed scores, weightings, and comments. Forrester does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in the Forrester Wave. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change.
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