Workday is a Vendor of Assurance in the Business Planning Value Index

Ventana Research is sharing insights about Workday, drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The 2022 Ventana Research Value Index: Business Planning is a distillation of a year of market and product research efforts.

In all of our Value Indexes, we utilize a structured research methodology that includes evaluation categories designed to reflect real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal and vendor selection process for business planning. We evaluated Workday and 13 other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product (Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability and Usability) and two related to the vendor (Total Cost of Ownership/Return on Investment and Vendor Validation). To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our expertise and research.

Workday provides applications for business, with a specialized focus in human resources and finance. Workday Adaptive Planning’s cloud-based software is designed to support collaborative, high-participation planning and budgeting.

Workday was categorized as a Vendor of Assurance, ranking eighth overall in this Value Index evaluation. It ranked ninth in Product Experience, where it performed best and seventh in Adaptability. It ranked fourth in Customer Experience, and was a Value Index Leader and first in Validation. Workday’s overall performance was impacted by its lower ranking in Capability, Manageability and Reliability, which represent 45% of the weighting in the overall Value Index.

Workday could perform better in Capability, where it ranked 11th, by examining its strategic and long-range planning, and supporting technology trends like artificial intelligence and machine learning. In Usability, where it ranked ninth, Workday could strengthen its focus on accessibility for a broader range of roles, and deepen its support for the simplicity in using business planning across the enterprise. Workday continues to make investments in the software’s capabilities that are likely to narrow the often-small differences between it and higher-scoring vendors. This assessment was based on Workday Adaptive Planning, available in September of 2021.

As a result of the rapidly changing business landscape since 2020, and the need to quickly – and intelligently – change business plans and budgets to be agile and build resiliency, many organizations have decided to adopt dedicated software to support a planning approach that offers speed and flexibility. Transforming how organizations plan and budget has become a top-of-mind issue for chief financial officers and CEOs. Our Value Index can help organizations make better informed decisions on software that is best suited to business needs.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of business planning software in the industry. Technology buyers can learn more about how to use our Value Index by clicking here, and included vendors that wish to learn more can click here. Read the report here.