Machine Learning, Blockchain, and Analytics Advancements Unlock Opportunity and Personalize Experiences to Help Improve Productivity

 

SINGAPORE - Media OutReach - 16 October 2019 - Workday Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY), a leader in enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, today announced a series of new innovations to help customers better navigate the changing world of HR.

 

At Workday Rising, the company's annual customer conference, Workday underscored how organizations can reimagine their businesses with new applications including Workday People Experience, Workday People Analytics, Workday Credentials, and more. With a technology architecture based on the Power of One--one source for data, one security model, one user experience, and one community--Workday is uniquely suited to deliver insights that help drive more strategic decision-making and improve employee engagement. 

 

Workday customers, which include 40 percent of the Fortune 500 and 50 percent of Fortune 50 companies, are better equipped to plan, execute, analyze, and extend--all in one system powered by machine learning, and backed by Workday's unwavering commitment to customer service. Leveraging newer technologies including machine learning, blockchain, and advanced analytics, Workday helps organizations achieve greater productivity.

Innovations for the Changing World of HR 

HR leaders are under more pressure than ever to effectively manage and develop their people as they encounter a new world where technology is reshaping every job, alternative work arrangements are becoming the norm, and speed of agility is key to survival. Driven by customer demand, Workday has made significant and unique investments to build solutions that support a multi-faceted workforce, new ways of working, and a distributed workplace. 

 

With new advancements announced at Workday Rising, customers are able to:

Personalize and Elevate Employee Experiences

People are overwhelmed with more tools than they know what to do with--and employers are relying on static portals that push them into various systems to find information or complete tasks. Workday has set out to create an experience that is personalized for each user, to help people feel more informed, agile, and truly supported.

• Workday People Experience utilizes machine learning to curate unique experiences for every user. This surfaces insights to a person at the right time, providing everything from guidance in career development and personalized content, to answers to HR and payroll questions via Workday's digital assistant and HR case creation and management--for more complex requests. By predicting what people want and giving them quick access to what they need, Workday People Experience helps make work more personal and productive. Additionally, its extensibility enables people to seamlessly access information, tasks, and answers from any third-party source or application.

Meet Evolving Talent Demands and Unlock Opportunity 

Skills have emerged as a critical data source for fueling the talent lifecycle, prompting Workday to build a core Skills Graph foundation using machine learning to map relationships between more than 200,000 skills. With this foundation, Workday created the skills cloud to link skills to people and then connect them to jobs, opportunities, projects, and much more, enabling new solutions such as:

• Skills insights, a new feature for Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) customers, enables HR managers to easily determine what skills they have and what gaps exist within their organization. For example, a customer service HR business partner could leverage a real-time and dynamic skills footprint to better understand what people in their company have the right skills to support a new service offering.
• Talent Marketplace provides a talent mobility platform that enables organizations to find and borrow talent, and enables workers to identify growth opportunities based on skills-matching for projects, gigs, and opportunities. For example, an employee interested in new career experiences could receive notice of an opportunity to support a six-month product launch in another department--based on her skills. Creating more awareness for internal mobility and opportunity leads to greater employee engagement, contribution, and value, and leveraging internal talent could expedite the project to more rapidly achieve results. Talent Marketplace will support internal gigs at launch, with future plans to incorporate internal job transfers and connect to external talent communities.

 

Make Faster, Smarter People Decisions 

Data science, once available to only a few, is now democratized and being applied to all aspects of HR. But most organizations' efforts to be more data-driven still run into challenges around fragmented data, data literacy, lack of specialized resources, and stringent data privacy and governance requirements. Utilizing one source for data, Workday can help customers make more fact-based decisions with the following advancements: 

• Workday People Analytics is a new application that uses powerful augmented analytics technology to give business leaders a view into the most critical business trends in their organization coupled with an understanding of what is most likely driving those trends--all delivered in story form. For example, a chief human resources officer could view a story that shows a promotion gap in the U.S. female population and how that's trending over time. This granular insight tells him or her if the plans and strategies HR leaders have put into place around diversity in leadership are working. 
• Discovery Boards, a drag-and-drop data discovery capability originally available as part of Workday Prism Analytics, will be available to Workday HCM customers as part of their subscription. These enable users to quickly visualize data to understand their people and financials, detect patterns, and discover insights. For example, HR leaders could use discovery boards to uncover trends in open headcount, and slice and dice by location and cost center. Through iterative visual analysis, they could see trends that show how areas of the business are growing, and where potential skills gaps may exist.

 

Automate and Digitize Time-Consuming Processes

Organizations are constantly seeking out tools that improve operational efficiencies in order to drive productivity. Workday aims to streamline and automate time-consuming manual processes across HR, enabling people to focus their time on more strategic efforts with the following solutions and capabilities:

• Workday Credentials and WayTo™ by Workday are new blockchain-powered credentialing technologies that will remove the friction associated with issuing, managing, and verifying credentials. Workday announced the beta release of the technology this week, and launched testing of the WayTo™ by Workday mobile app with Workday Rising attendees.

o    Workday Credentials will enable enterprise customers to quickly issue, manage and verify credentials for all types of workers and individuals--employees, contractors, students, and partners, helping to streamline credential verification and compliance. 

o    The WayTo™ by Workday mobile app will give individuals a better way to store, manage, and share their verified credentials as well as professional and personal information on their device. This means that individuals can decide exactly what and with whom to share information about themselves to expedite application processes. For instance, a hospital could onboard a nurse in days instead of weeks by verifying their identity, healthcare credentials, and work experience all within Workday. 

• Plan to execute, a new workforce planning capability available to customers using Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud and Workday HCM, is a key step in the journey to unify Adaptive Insights with Workday. With this deeper unification, once headcount budgets are approved, new positions are automatically created in Workday for a more seamless transition from planning to execution.

 

Comment on the News

"Today's organizations need new ways to engage and inspire a fluid workforce that brings its consumer technology expectations to the workplace," said David Somers, vice president and general manager, Talent Optimization, Workday. "Workday is infusing new technologies such as machine learning, blockchain, and advanced analytics into every inch of our solutions. This enables us to surface meaningful insights, create greater efficiencies, and deliver a more intelligent experience that is unmatched by other vendors--for the broader benefit of our customers, their employees, and their bottom line." 

 

Additional Information 

• See how Workday is innovating for the changing world of HR.
• Read the blog "How Workday People Experience Gives You an Advantage in the Changing World of Work" by Stuart Bowness, vice president, software engineering, tools and technology, Workday.
• "What's New in Workday Analytics: A Q&A With Pete Schlampp" by Workday Staff Writers.
• See how Workday is helping organizations get ahead, and stay ahead, in the changing world of IT.
• "Our Vision to Digitize Credentials in the New World of Work" by Jon Ruggiero, senior vice president, Workday.
• Read the blog "Machine Learning Across Workday Products: Delivering Undeniable Business Value to Customers" by Sayan Chakraborty, senior vice president, tools and technology, Workday.

Availability

All products and features are available or planned for availability in the next calendar year.

About Workday

Workday is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources. Founded in 2005, Workday delivers financial management, human capital management, planning, and analytics applications designed for the world's largest companies, educational institutions, and government agencies. Organizations ranging from medium-sized businesses to Fortune 50 enterprises have selected Workday.

 

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, statements regarding the expected performance and benefits of Workday's offerings. The words "believe," "may," "will," "estimate," "continue," "anticipate," "intend," "expect," "seek," "plan," "project," and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. If the risks materialize or assumptions prove incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements. Risks include, but are not limited to, risks described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including our Form 10-Q for the fiscal year ended July 31, 2019 and our future reports that we may file with the SEC from time to time, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. Workday assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.

 

Any unreleased services, features, or functions referenced in this document, our website, or other press releases or public statements that are not currently available are subject to change at Workday's discretion and may not be delivered as planned or at all. Customers who purchase Workday, Inc. services should make their purchase decisions based upon services, features, and functions that are currently available.

 

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