Workday Platform options
How can your organization take advantage of the growing capabilities of the Workday Platform
Looking for ways to make the Workday system your own? There are a few options to consider.
Where Workday started...
When Workday was a early pioneer in the Cloud ERP market, their differentiation was built on "one-code line" in stark contrast to legacy providers. Many SAP and PeopleSoft customers dreaded the costly upgrade projects that introduced risk and cost and provided very few tangible benefits. A "self-upgrading system" was to tale of dreams. In order to facility this single-code line approach, customizations were non-existent. Instead a configurable standard software approach allow customer to make fast decision and adjust the features to their needs.
Limitations of standard software
Many companies find that they need to augment standard software to improve user experience and feature functionality. Either the delivered features are incomplete or too complicated. Adding custom fields to an existing Workday object may be a solution for some, but it comes with limitations (such as UI, busines process, etc.)
Solution 1: Integrations
The quickest way to get new processes supported is by creating your own applications and integration them via applications. This could be done on any web application platform (such as Heroku or Next Js). This may be attractive for organziations that already have a development staff in house.
Benefits:
- Full control of coding language, storage strategy, etc.
- Full choice of UI
- Available resources
Drawbacks
- Ongoing support cost
- Security risks
- Analytics support
- Data syncing
- Users may need to navigate to a different tab or browser session
Solution 2: Workday Extend
Workday has built out substantial capabilities over the past years that make it possible for customer and implementers to build Workday experience directly within the tenant.
Benefits:
- Secure
- Reportable
- BP enabled
- Single UI
Drawbacks
- Specialized skillset with few available resources
- Costly
- Long delivery times
Solution 3: Workday Apps
Many vendors are now offering their applications on the Workday marketplace. Those are pre-packaged solutions that have been fully developed and tested.
Benefits:
- All benefits of Workday Extend
- Quick implementation
- Vendor supported maintenance
Drawbacks
- Subscription Cost
- Limited to available apps
Looking Ahead
As the Workday marketplace grows and matures, expect a lot more offerings from small to large solutions. Vendors such as ourselves are constantly looking to provide Workday customers with the tools they need.