It’s a world of work.

Well, we all know that, but technology platform providers specializing in Human Resources (HR), the expanded notion of Human Capital Management (HCM) and all manner of employee eXperience and workflow management systems like to talk about the ‘world of work’ as some kind of defined notion that encapsulates people, places, products and processes in a new and more tangible way.

One of those companies is Workday.

Pleasantly headquartered in Pleasanton, California, Workday offers enterprise cloud applications for financial management and HR – allied to that core, its application stack is designed to also serve planning, spend management and analytics. Some sources also list the company’s expertise in student information systems.

Founded in 2005 by Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri (formerly at PeopleSoft, a company also known for its HR/HCM technology and now acquired by Oracle), Workday is very much of the cloud-native generation and is recognized for its quick implementation.

As detailed here on TechTarget, “Workday claims its use of a single, cloud-based database for both HCM and financials provides better integration and embedded business intelligence across business functions than is available in most ERP systems.”

Killing off frankensauruses

If the inference wasn’t obvious, Workday exists as a proposition that aims to go beyond both Oracle and SAP through its single cloud-based approach, something the SAP and Oracle “frankensauruses” (it’s a word now, Bhusri said it on the record at Workday Rising 2016) are alleged to find tougher, given their need to integrate and interconnect a legacy systems base to newer cloud-native acquisitions.

“Whether it’s planning for the unknown, supporting employees in new working models, or embracing technologies that deliver the insights needed to drive the business forward, our customers have navigated an immense amount of change over the last few years and technology has played a critical role in enabling them to adapt,” said Pete Schlampp, chief strategy officer, Workday.

“With customer service as a core value, our focus has and will always be on supporting our customers through innovation to meet their needs today and in the future,” Schlampp added.

Workday Rising Europe 2022

So to the company’s annual user conference then, what can we expect from Workday Rising Europe 2022?

The company has promised to explain how its core platform includes new capabilities to help elevate the office of finance, ways to create more personalized employee experiences and establish a more open and connected Workday to help companies adapt and thrive in today’s dynamic environments.

What can we expect in terms of product announcements at the event? 

We know that real world finance teams are being tasked with delivering more strategic insights and scaling to meet business requirements. Workday hopes to answer the challenges in this space with new machine learning capabilities to help create a more frictionless finance experience, increased performance and scalability to support company-wide planning, and deeper insights into the supply chain to support environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives.

The event’s innovation keynote will be delivered by Chano Fernandez, co-CEO at Workday, who will take to the stage to share the Workday vision and explain how firms can (in his view) gain the power to adapt to change.

A six-pack of tracks

There are six major tracks at Workday Rising Europe 2022, all related to the company’s core specialism as follows:

• Financial Management
  
• Spend Management
  
• Employee Voice and Experience
  
• Workforce Management and Payroll
  
• Talent and Skills
  
• Workforce Planning and Analytics
  

In terms of recent product updates this year, Workday Extend enables organizations to create new capabilities without requiring IT resources or costly new technologies.

Workday says customers will be now be able to use a more connected, adaptable and extensible Workday, using the following capabilities:

App Builder, a web-based Integrated Developer Environment (IDE), now offers build experience with visual and preview modes for business developers.

A low-code/no-code visual capability, which will be added to App Builder, will enable developers to create apps via a drag-and-drop user interface.

Workday Graph API, a new tool for developers, will be made available to Workday Extend customers. Based on open source API query and manipulation language GraphQL, this tool will help streamline the entire API experience to navigate and discover Workday APIs, reducing complexity and ongoing maintenance while improving responsiveness and developer productivity.

Workday Engage, Everywhere & Empower

Workday also continues to build in line with its broader experience strategy, which consists of three primary pillars – Workday Engage, Workday Everywhere and Workday Empower.

Workday Engage is an initiative focused on making work effortless through frictionless experiences. Workday Today, the reimagined home page now live in production for the entire Workday user base, delivers a personalised experience across devices.

In the future, Workday plans to provide a dynamic home layout with drag-and-drop functionality, enabling users to design and configure their homepage.

Workday Everywhere is an initiative focused on bringing Workday to where people prefer to work. Employees can now view required Workday Learning courses from workspaces such as Microsoft Teams or Slack and managers can quickly approve team learning enrollments within the flow of work.

In the future, Workday plans to provide managers with more detailed team insights, further helping them to focus on employee satisfaction and success.

Workday Empower is an initiative focused on driving hyper-personalisation through machine learning (ML). With the Manager Insights Hub, a people manager can see comprehensive team information, including worker skills, along with actionable, ML-driven insights to help engage and develop employees.

In the future, Workday plans to deliver ML that will make recommendations based on past actions – for example, preemptively offering to download a report for viewing based on when that specific report is typically accessed.

Money money money

What’s Sweden without ABBA? Nothing, clearly, so the guest keynote speaker for this event is Björn Ulvaeus from the legendary pop group.

“Don’t miss this unique opportunity to hear Björn in conversation with DJ and broadcaster Goldierocks and learn how ABBA’s innovative approach has kept the band relevant through the years and established them as changemakers,” reads the promo.

Nothing says cloud-native Human Capital Management with integrated financial systems intelligence like a quick burst of Dancing Queen, right?

The event runs from Tuesday 15 to Thursday 17 November at the Stockholmsmässan conference centre – the event hashtag is #WDAYRISING and Workday tweets here.

Surströmming anyone?