Workday is an SaaS cloud-based app for HR professionals and small business owners used for Human Capital Management (HCM). Workday is a ground-breaking industry leader when it comes to the “Software as a Service” concept and this “Business Process Framework” as they call it, has some truly distinctive advantages for growing human capital within your business.
Biggest Advantages:
- One of the biggest advantages in using Workday lies in the fact that you can program the software to work within the HCM parameters that are most important to you and your company, without having to deal with the headaches that can come with using brick-and-mortar consultancy firms or agencies to do this same work for you. That’s right, no more meetings, followups, or excuses to deal with from consultancies who make promises to get your business; only to string you along with poor or less-than-optimal results thereafterward!
- The intuitive software is made to be programmable without the need for you or your HR team to understand or use actual computer-programming language.
- At its core, Workday allows you to track your employee’s progress from the time they start working for you (or from the time you start using the software), by tracking all the important variables needed for an employee to be integral to your company’s sustainability and growth. Variables such as employee time-management, expenses (and other accounting variables), retention measures, along with current and future training plans to help them be a valuable resource to your company.
Other Advantages:
- Quarterly software updates.
- Payroll integration.
- Transaction processing.
- Social media tools, like post scheduling and automatic “likes” and “retweets”.
Who Shouldn’t Use Workday:
This SaaS app will only be useful if you plan to grow your business, or are already at the point where HCM software is needed “yesterday” and you or your human resources people are scrambling to keep up with employee data and progress tracking. Their software is designed to help you focus on treating your employees as a definable asset that grow along with your company, thus allowing you to gain maximum benefit from them (see more about human capital here: Wikipedia: Human Capital).
Obviously, if you’re running a one or two-person small business, with no plan or desire for future growth, you’d probably consider Workday’s software an unnecessary extravagance more than a necessity for your business. Truth be told, you wouldn’t benefit from its use in such cases.
For those who want to grow their business, or have a larger established organization with a pool of employees in place, then you and your business are in for a real treat. They’re quickly closing in on competitors such as: Oracle, PeopleSoft, Intuit, and Unanet.
Workday’s portable modules allow users to seamlessly switch from one device to another without experiencing any downtime or usability hiccups. You can find out more about modular programming in the following article if you want to learn more about the process and its benefits to the end user: Tech Target Article on Modular Programming
Disadvantages of Using Workday.com
- Check out this znet article about one the “potentially major” drawback of using Workday’s software. For those of you who don’t want to read it, the article discusses how the SaaS company’s servers shut down for over 12 hours recently, and customers went without the service for that time period (Note: It appears they do have their bases covered in case of server failure, as they addressed the problem diligently, and learned how to prevent the same thing from happening in the future.)
- Data loss is always a potential concern when you’re working in a cloud-based environment. Though technology advancements will lessen this possibility as time goes on.
- All their important functionality relies on being in the cloud. This means you need to be online in order to use the software and/or reference important data. If you’re in an area with no or poor connectivity then your work-while-vacationing plans might change rather quickly.
Other Disadvantages:
- Currently, net payroll data isn’t updated within your account; you have to request reporting data from the aggregating payroll company itself.
- No current recruitment options are integrated within their cloud software (such as with Oracle’s system.)
- Your heavily reliant on Workday’s security – if it fails, your data could be compromised to hackers, which would be a definite PR nightmare depending on how big your company is.
- The company’s current model is designed for companies with 1000+ employees (though a quick social search will show you they have a great deal of companies in their customer roster with 200-1000.)
Conclusion
Although they haven’t yet put together an ultimate HRM package that trumps their major competitors in each and every way, Workday.com’s founders, and many of their employees have immigrated over from Oracle and PeopleSoft – their two biggest competitors (with Oracle considered by many to be the better of the two.)
Workday’s cloud-based system will only get better, and the disadvantages that are mentioned above can pale in comparison to some of the drawbacks of not having a mobile-friendly system to manage your company’s human capital. If you’re a small and growing business, you have the chance to get in near the ground floor and possibly get grand-fathered in with some great rates, and customer service seniority as they continue to grow their SaaS.
