CIO / IT

Consistent with emerging signs of economic recovery and increasing competition to attract and retain customers, a CIO’s focus is shifting from cost-effective IT operations to growth and competitive advantage projects. The majority of a CIO’s budget is dedicated to day-to-day operations. As a result, CIOs are looking to Internet service-based technologies such as cloud computing because they are freeing up budget and releasing resources for innovation and growth projects.

ERP systems traditionally require significant IT infrastructure and operations support, including hardware, software, security, integration, disaster recovery, backups, upgrades, and more. Maintaining ERP systems over time can consume the majority of the IT budget and resources. Cloud applications can address this issue by providing innovative enterprise applications without the IT overhead.

However, cloud applications require a different kind of due diligence. It is critical that CIO’s evaluate and identify real SaaS solutions and distinguish them from simple hosting of traditional on-premise applications.

Learn about the 10 Critical Requirements for Cloud Applications and how Workday meets these requirements.

See how Workday can raise your IT teams’ contribution to your organization’s growth by redirecting precious IT resources from low yield operations activity to competitive advantage projects in each of these essential areas:

Multi-tenancy >>

Multi-tenant SaaS lets Workday customers enjoy a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that would require millions of dollars and a small army of IT professionals to replicate in-house.

Vendor-Managed Updates >>

Customers automatically adopt the latest release, freeing up your IT resources for more strategic projects.  See what's in the latest Workday updates.

Integration >>

The effectiveness of any application is in its ability to co-exist and communicate with the rest of the applications the organization uses. Learn about how Workday’s approach to integration reduces your costs and risk.

Business-Driven Configurability >>

Traditionally the rule of thumb was the application provides 80% of your organization needs and your IT department builds out the rest through customization. Customization existed due to lack of configuration options and became the root cause of many customers falling behind in the innovation curve. By designing an application with configuration options at the core, the need for customization is mitigated—and so is all its negative downstream consequences and cost.

Data Center and Security >>

Security is a critical component to any system, particularly with the pervasive use of mobile technologies. Workday secures its service using ISO 27001 security certification. It is the high-water mark of security and the only certification recognized internationally.

IT Infrastructure

The cloud application providers must maintain a state-of-the-art, high-performance IT infrastructure (data centers, databases, operating systems, networks, and storage systems) to remain competitive. “Our entire business is based on high-performing IT operations. This is our lifeblood. It is how we remain competitive and where we’ll continue to innovate.” Stan Swete, Workday CTO.

Total Cost of Ownership

Application ownership costs come in many forms—from the obvious and tangible, such as upgrade projects, to the less known and potentially more costly aspects, such as missed market opportunities due to lack of innovation in the supporting business processes. Learn how Workday keeps you on track with more predictable and lower cost of ownership.

Deployment >>

Over the past 20 years, the legacy application vendors helped earn the industry’s a well-deserved reputation of long, arduous, expensive, and highly risky ERP implementations. With new cloud-based technology, old lessons learned, and a fresh perspective, Workday is deploying customers in half the time with predictable go-live dates (accurate to the day) at half the cost. Learn how Workday has achieved its track record.

Control

Traditionally organizations deployed new processes based on the timeline dictated by the de-support notices of their ERP vendors. With Workday, you are always on the latest release with new functionality arriving switched off. This allows your organization to plan the delivery of its new business processes on its own timeline as opposed to the vendor's timeline.

You maintaining ownership and control of your data is a core belief in the Workday business model

IT Efficiency

Running a cost-effective IT operation is one of the moving target goals of every CIO. Cloud applications free CIOs and their teams from time and energy spent on non-strategic, back-office IT operations and high-cost software customizations. Learn how the cloud helps to liberate IT.