STARTING FROM SCRATCH

From the Ground Up

Workday was started with a very simple premise: We can do better. The company founders set out to build a brand-new business services company that could serve organizations more effectively and with less burden than traditional ERP systems. In order to succeed, Workday needed to throw out all of the assumptions that turned ERP into a huge, complex, and piecemeal solution that no longer meets business needs. Workday would have to start from scratch.

A clean slate

As a result of this decision, Workday was able to take advantage of several benefits:

• No legacy technology needs to be preserved and worked around. ERP is so complex because it relies on technology developed 25 years ago and requires complicated integrations and bolt-on additions to deal with the changing requirements of today's business.
• New technologies that did not exist when ERP was first designed can be leveraged. Modern advances such as software-as-a-service and object-oriented design can be used as a foundation to offer better capabilities with easier interactions for users. Because ERP is so dependent on old technology, it is very difficult for new tools to be effectively utilized.
• The new system can be designed to eliminate many of the problems introduced or mishandled by ERP, such as:
  • The need for an external actionable analytics system to consolidate data
  • Reliance on IT to generate usable operational insight to support business decisions
  • Separate controls solutions (GRC) to support new regulations
  • The cost and complexity of integrations
  • Inability to effectively manage a global workforce from a unified system
  • Outdated interfaces that are unpleasant to use
  • Rigid RDBMS core that is difficult to change post-implementation

New solutions to old problems

Workday solves these problems at the core of its solution, not as bolt-ons that increase complexity and cost for customers. By starting from scratch, Workday offers customers:

• Improved tools to actively manage the workforce and organizations without IT
• Built-in Actionable Analytics tools that can be leveraged by anyone with data access permissions
• A configurable Business Process Framework that allows companies to design, document, and audit their business processes
• Integration solutions to help minimize and ease the burden of building and maintaining integrations
• A global core that offers a consistent experience for all employees within a company, while also accommodating the different needs for workers in different areas of the world
• Dynamic organizational structures and Worktags that enable the system to accurately model and report on the company as it exists in reality today
• A fresh, modern user interface that most casual Internet users can navigate with ease

Companies no longer have to suffer with the bleak reality of ERP and its complexities. Workday is the new, improved solution to help businesses operate in the modern era.