Market Perspectives

We are happy to share some insights about Workday drawn from our latest market research, Ventana Research Buyers Guide: Payroll Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.  

We recently published three Ventana Research 2023 Payroll Management Buyers Guides, an assessment of technology vendors and products that provide individual and combined payroll management, domestic payroll and global payroll platform support.  

At Ventana Research, we continue to believe that, for most use-cases, there is a clear choice for payroll management platforms for any use in your organization. We developed three technology assessments and buyers guides to focus on overall payroll management requirements as well as specific domestic payroll and global payroll platform use-cases. 

In all of our Buyers Guides, we utilize a structured research methodology called the Value Index that includes evaluation categories designed to reflect real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal (RFP) and vendor selection process for payroll management. We evaluated Workday and seven other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product (adaptability, capability, manageability, reliability and usability) and two related to the vendor (TCO/ROI and vendor validation).  

In the overall Payroll Management Buyers Guide, our analysis classified Workday as a vendor of Merit, receiving an overall grade of B+ with a 74.3% performance. Workday’s best grouped results came in Product Experience at 75.6% performance and a B++ grade due in part to its B++ in Manageability. In Customer Experience, Workday received a B with a 67.4% performance due to its 66.3% performance in TCO/ROI. Workday did not participate in the RFI process. 

Workday’s B++ grade in Product Experience was impacted by its B+ in Reliability where it could increase user configurability and available metrics to manage performance. Customer Experience was impacted by its B grade in TCO/ROI where it could provide more detail on cost savings from implementation.   

Workday performed best in Product Experience with a B++ grade, notably in Manageability where it received a B++ due to its dedication to protecting consumer privacy. In Capability, the product has demonstrated the ability to increase efficiency and drive productivity of the payroll department. 

In the Domestic Payroll Buyers Guide, our analysis classified Workday as an Innovative vendor, receiving an overall grade of B+ with a 74.7% performance. Workday’s best grouped results came in Product Experience at 76.3% performance and a B++ grade due in part to its B++ in Capability. In Customer Experience, Workday received a B grade with a 67.4% performance due to its 68.5% performance in Validation. Workday did not participate in the RFI process. 

Workday’s B++ grade in Product Experience was impacted by its B+ in Reliability where it could improve the performance metrics available to users. Customer Experience was impacted by its B grade in TCO/ROI where it could provide more depth into the potential costs of implementing the product.  

Workday performed best in Product Experience with a B++ grade, notably in Capability, receiving a B++ due to its ability to assist administrators provide accurate payroll in an efficient manner. In Manageability, Workday was also given a B++ for its effectiveness in protecting consumer privacy. Workday’s publicly available product demonstrations and other resources led to its B in Validation. 

In the Global Payroll Buyers Guide, our analysis classified Workday as Exemplary, receiving an overall grade of B+ with a 74.4% performance. Workday’s best grouped results came in Product Experience at 75.8% performance and a B++ grade due in part to its B++ in Capability. In Customer Experience, Workday received a B grade with a 67.4% performance due to its 68.5% in Validation. Workday did not participate in the RFI process. 

Workday’s B++ grade in Product Experience was impacted by its B+ in Reliability where it could showcase more of the investments and improvements being made to the reliability of their product including various performance and scalability features. Customer Experience was impacted by its B grade in TCO/ROI where it could demonstrate more of the tools used to help a prospect or customer use to evaluate Total Cost of Ownership.  

Workday performed best in Product Experience with a B++ grade, notably in Capability where it received a B++ due to its strong payroll system integrations such as error processing and review, analytics integrations and expense management systems. Workday also performed well in Usability with a B++ grade due to their strong user experience and the accessibility features. 

This assessment was based on Workday Payroll for the U.S., v. Workday 2023 Release 2 & Workday Global Payroll Cloud, released September 2023.  

This research-based guide is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of human capital management software in the industry. Technology buyers can learn more about how to use our Buyers Guide by clicking here and included vendors that wish to learn more can click here. Click below to read the individual reports: 

Payroll Management Buyers Guide  

Domestic Payroll Buyers Guide  

Global Payroll Buyers Guide