Workday Inc. Overview

Workday Inc.

Workday Inc. offers cloud-based applications for businesses. Payroll, initiatives, and solutions for higher education are all offered by the company, also are human capital, spend, and financial management. Workday serves businesses and professional services, healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing, retail and hospitality, education, and the government and non-profit sectors.

The company operates in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region, among other places. The US headquarters of Workday is in Pleasanton, California.

Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri decided in 2005 to start a business that would sell cloud-based HR and finance applications. The two friends from high school had a lot of experience. Dave was the CEO and board chairman of PeopleSoft, which he founded in 1987. At PeopleSoft, Aneel had held several leadership positions, the most recent of which was senior vice president of product strategy. That decision birthed Workday.

Duffield and the venture capital firm Greylock Partners provided the initial funding. Workday announced the launch of its first application, Workday Human Capital Management, in November 2006. It also relocated its headquarters from Walnut Creek, California, in December 2008 to Pleasanton, California, the location of the former company founded by PeopleSoft founder, Duffield.

Workday made the official announcement on February 6, 2008, that it had concluded a definitive agreement to acquire Cape Clear Software. Workday and Flextronics agreed to a significant contract in May 2008 to provide services related to human capital management software. Workday announced on April 29, 2009, that it had received $75 million in funding from New Enterprise Associates. The company’s CEO and co-founder Dave Duffield and existing investors Greylock Partners also participated in the round. Workday announced $85 million in additional funding on October 24, 2011, bringing the total amount of capital raised to $250 million.

With the ticker symbol WDAY, Workday launched its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in October 2012. Workday added a cloud-based student information system to its lineup of financial and human capital management products in 2016. Stories.bi, the business of Filip Dousek, was acquired by Workday in 2018. Chano Fernandez was elevated to co-CEO in 2020. Aneel Bhusri assumed the role of chairman of the board after Dave Duffield resigned in April 2022.

Workdays announced in November 2021 that it had acquired VNDLY, a startup that helps businesses manage personnel from outside their workforce, for $510 million.

Aneel Bhusri

Since 2021, Aneel Bhusri has served as the company’s Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer. He had previously held the position of CEO of the business since 2014. He had previously held the position of chairman of the business from 2012 to 2014.

Chano Fernandez

Since 2021, Chano Fernandez has served as the company’s Co-Chief Executive Officer and a Director. In the past, he served in a number of the company’s leadership positions, including Co-President from 2018 to 2020; From Executive Vice President of Global Field Operations from 2017 to 2018; and EMEA and APJ President from 2014 to 2017.

Barbara Larson

Since February 2022, Barbara A. Larson has served as the company’s Chief Financial Officer. She previously held the positions of general manager of workday financial management and Senior Vice President of accounting, tax, and treasury.

James Bozzini

Since 2017, the company has been led by James J. Bozzini as Chief Operating Officer. He previously held the positions of Senior Vice President of Services from 2014 to 2015 and Executive Vice President of Customer Operations from 2015 to 2017.

Peter Schlampp

Since 2021, Peter Schlampp has served as the company’s Chief Strategy Officer. He previously held the position of the company’s Executive Vice President of Product Development.

Workday’s business model is subscription-based. It brings in cash from memberships and expert help expenses. The monthly fees that customers pay to access the company’s software makeup subscription revenues. The costs of consulting services for implementing and customizing Workday products and reports are known as professional service fees.

Its cloud-based platform, which provides solutions for enterprise management such as financial management, talent management, enterprise planning, human capital management, and spend management, is utilized by customers. Through a SaaS delivery model, it primarily serves business customers with its software. There are currently more than 8000 customers worldwide.

Using a standardized set of cloud APIs, partners can create and deliver a wide range of applications, including professional services, analytics, and connectors to on-premises data sources, thanks to its unique open application architecture. Its hearty innovation stage is exceptionally versatile and secure, furnishing clients with an unmistakable financial benefit since they just have to pay for the product they use.

Despite the fact that Workday competes with major brands like SAP and Oracle in the market, the vendor still sees significant subscription growth. It claims a sizable share of the market for human capital management because its cutting-edge software products add value without interfering with clients’ day-to-day operations. However, there are costs associated with increasing investments in research and development. The company’s profits frequently suffer as a result of increased marketing and product development expenditures.

Additionally, the acquisition of Adaptive Insights by Workday drained the company’s $3.4 billion cash reserves. Despite this, the company’s management team argued that the $1.55 billion deal will help Workday speed up the planning of its product roadmap. The company intends to make use of the advanced modeling and analytics capabilities of Adaptive Insights. Workday’s financial management software should see an increase in corporate client adoption as a result of improved modeling and analytics.

The company’s business model is very straightforward; it provides a cloud-based solution for human resource management and finance.

Workday created its Insight Apps line of products by acquiring the startup, Identified and its artificial intelligence, Syman in February 2014. At Workday Rising 2014, the first products running SYMAN were announced. The company’s decision to open its platform to developers, partners, and third-party software was made public by CEO Aneel Bhusri in July 2017. Workday will therefore enter the Platform as a Service (PaaS) industry. Customers will be able to develop custom Workday extensions and applications, according to Aneel.

In 2018, Workday announced that it had acquired SkipFlag, a company that developed an artificial intelligence (AI) knowledge base that builds itself from company communications. Some other products it offers are:

• Workday Financial Management
• Workday Human Capital Management
• Workday Adaptive Planning
• Spend Management
• Talent Management
• Payroll and Workforce Management
• Analytics and Reporting
• Professional Services Automation
• Platform and Product Extensions
• Workday Peakon Employee Voice

• Workday generated $5.139 billion in annual revenue in 2022, a 19.01% increase from 2021. The twelve months ending July 31, 2022 saw a revenue increase of 21.42% for Workday, reaching $5.674 billion.
• Workday’s annual operating income decreased by 50.5% from 2020 to $-0.249 billion in 2021. Its annual operating income decreased by 53.16 percent from 2021 to $-0.116 billion in 2022.
• The annual net income of Workday in 2021 was $-0.282 billion, a decrease of 41.24% from 2020. The annual net income of Workday in 2022 was $0.029 billion, a decrease of 110.4% from 2021.
• The total assets of Workday in 2021 totaled $8.718 billion, a 27.9% increase from 2020. Workday’s total assets reached $10.499 billion in 2022, a 20.42 percent increase from 2021.
• Workday’s shareholder equity increased by 31.82 percent from 2020 to $3.278 billion in 2021. Shareholder equity for Workday in 2022 was $4.535 billion, a 38.36 percent increase from 2021.

Workday makes every effort to become the world’s leading provider of software solutions for enterprise human resources management. Since its inception in 2005, it has experienced tremendous growth, making it one of the most dynamic businesses in the sector. In 2020, Fortune magazine ranked Workday Inc. at number five on their Fortune List of the Top 100 Companies to Work For, in 2020 based on an employee survey of satisfaction.