Workday announces integrated, up-to-date benchmarking service

Finance and human resources cloud applications provider Workday today announced the general availability of Workday Data-as-a-Service (DaaS), a cloud service that provides data to customers to enable more informed decision-making.

The first service delivered on the DaaS offering, Workday Benchmarking, provides key metrics to customers seeking a better understanding of their company's relative performance in comparison to peers to help achieve optimal performance in their respective markets.

With Workday Benchmarking, customers worldwide can leverage the collective power of Workday's extensive community – including over 26 million workers across more than 1,800 global organisations.

Workday Benchmarking is seamlessly unified with all of Workday's products, including Workday Financial Management, Workday Human Capital Management (HCM), Workday Planning, and Workday Prism Analytics, empowering customers with the only cloud system to plan, execute, and analyse their business through one secure environment.

"Data is the new currency, and Workday Benchmarking demonstrates how we continually deliver the analytical capabilities that enable our customers worldwide to unlock even more insights from their data and the broader Workday community," said Joe Korngiebel, Workday chief technology officer.

"With Workday Benchmarking, they can tap into up-to-date, reliable data that gives an industry-wide view of how their individual business is performing compared to others, better equipping them to prioritise business initiatives, pick up new best practices, and strategically allocate resources in an instant.

Up-to-date benchmarks, analytics, and insights to improve performance

Traditional benchmarking services and reports typically provide outdated data delivered out of context in silos.

These services are not only costly but difficult to manage due to their lack of flexibility around rules and calculations.

Workday Benchmarking addresses these challenges by enabling customers to better understand their individual organisation's relative performance using current, reliable data.

Once customers elect to participate in the Workday Benchmarking service and select what data to contribute, their data is de-identified and added to a secure, aggregated dataset.

In return, they get access to benchmarks representative of Workday's participating customer community and can see how they compare against peers with similar demographics such as industry or company size. Benchmarks are surfaced right in the Workday applications and dashboards that business leaders access most, so they are empowered to make informed decisions on what actions to take to improve their company's competitive position—all without ever having to leave Workday.

With Workday Benchmarking, customers have ready access to a growing catalogue of benchmarks, including:

• Workforce Composition Benchmarks (Age, Diversity, Tenure, and more) – For example, HR leaders at a technology company could compare the percentage of males and females in their workforce with similar organisations to gauge how well they are tracking against diversity goals.
• Turnover and Career Retention Benchmarks (Talent, Turnover, and others) – For example, a talent professional in healthcare noticing an increase in attrition can see if his company's voluntary turnover is higher than that of industry competitors, which may indicate a retention issue.
• Leadership and Manager Effectiveness Benchmarks (Span of Control and Leadership) – For instance, a chief accounting officer at a financial institution concerned that her people managers may be overwhelmed can compare span of control with managers across the industry to identify which teams may need more support.
• Workday Usage Benchmarks (System Utilization, Business Process, and others) – For example, an HR information systems executive in retail can find out if business processes are being completed faster or slower than peer organisations, to help determine if he should reconfigure business process definitions for greater efficiency.
• Financial Management Benchmarks – In future releases, benchmarks including core revenue growth and return on invested capital will be available to help customers better connect workforce metrics to financial success and strategic business goals. For example, a CFO at a professional services firm could compare revenue per employee against similar companies, then model against project staffing needs to ensure optimal staffing that delivers on billability while balancing costs.

Like the entire Workday suite of applications, Workday Benchmarking leverages the power of one - one version of software, a single source of truth, one customer community, and a single security model and user experience – enabling customers to benefit from:

• Current and Reliable Data – Live, transactional data ensures aggregation that is consistent, accurate, and highly relevant, greatly reducing the time customers typically need to wait for access to benchmarks and calculations they can trust.  
• Benchmarks in Context – Benchmarks can be configured to surface in the context of where customers most frequently interact with Workday. For example, a business leader can view a dashboard benchmarking their company's actual performance against peers, and then quickly take action all in a single system.
• Built-in Security and Privacy – Workday Benchmarking relies on the highest privacy and security standards. All data contributed to Workday Benchmarking is de-identified and aggregated with similar data from a variety of sources prior to reporting.
• Distribution and Governance – Like all analytics in Workday, benchmarking data can be secured to a domain and shared with anyone in the organisation, allowing insights to reach the people who need them without compromising control over individual permissions.
• Flexibility – As calculations evolve, peer groups change, and metrics are added, Workday's cloud architecture makes it possible for Workday Benchmarking to quickly adapt and immediately deliver new metrics to customers.

Workday Benchmarking is now generally available to all customers, at no additional cost to their core subscription.