Workday Unveils New User Experience

Design and Functionality in New Desktop Experience Inspired by Mobile Apps, Consumer Web; Company Also Announces Feature-Rich Release of Workday 21


PLEASANTON, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 23, 2014) - Workday, Inc. (NYSE: WDAY), a leader in enterprise cloud applications for global human resources and finance, today unveiled a completely new desktop experience for its millions of users around the world. Designed in partnership with customers, including some of the world's most popular consumer and social brands, the new user experience combines a redesigned visual interface built on HTML5, along with dozens of rich, intuitive features to enhance the usability customers already recognize with Workday.

Workday also announced immediate availability of its latest update, Workday 21, which includes more than 240 new HR and finance features, approximately 65 of which were customer suggestions. Workday 21 is the first update to be released leveraging the company's shift to a single code line for both development and production environments -- a transition that simultaneously increases the frequency of innovation delivered to customers, while minimizing disruption.

Simplifying the User Experience for Employees, Managers, and Power Users
Since Workday is a single system, the design and functionality of the new user experience touches every screen of Workday Financial Management and Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) for a cohesive look and feel regardless of where a user is in the application.

As a result, employees, managers, and power users across finance and human resources all benefit from an experience that is:

  • Consumer-Driven: Familiar visual cues and patterns influenced by popular email services, social sites, search engines, and web commerce make it simple for new users to login and use Workday without training.
  • Clean: Increased whitespace, subtle iconography, and simple fonts are just starting points of a more approachable visual interface for users to discover priority information and actions at a glance.
  • Consolidated: An overall shift to a single-page application view along with several new features reduces the clicks for a user to navigate through a business process.
  • Contextual: More intelligent and predictive features personalize the relevancy and security of information based on a user's unique needs and previous behavior in Workday.

Workday 21 Streamlines Complex Financial Business Processes for Large Enterprises
As large organizations face greater complexity and increased regulations of global operations, Workday continues to deliver more sophisticated functionality in Workday Financial Management to help customers simplify business processes and uncover efficiencies in the cloud.

With new features in Workday 21, customers can:

  • Better manage assets with enhanced capabilities that automatically group similar items into one pooled asset. Additionally, customers can more easily track the financial lifecycle of multiple, diverse assets that form one composite item.
  • Ease international trade accounting by providing full visibility into deferred revenue recognition in multiple foreign currencies as well as multi-currency support for cash, customer, and vendor accounts.

Workday 21 Extends Mobility for Seamless Talent and Performance Management
With Workday 21, the company continues to advance the industry's broadest cloud application for human resources, Workday HCM, with enhanced speed and convenience for talent and performance management. Among several new features, Workday 21 marks the availability of performance reviews on mobile, which enables employees and managers to start, continue, or complete the review process as they move between desktop and mobile devices without any additional setup.

With performance reviews now accessible on Workday for iPad® and Workday for iPhone®, customers can:

  • Accelerate and improve completion of performance management initiatives considering users can take action anytime, anywhere.
  • Minimize the materials and time spent training workers on the review process with an interface designed for immediate user engagement. 
  • Equip on-the-go managers to quickly check progress of their entire team and complete approvals for individual employees.

Comments on the News
"Organizations are rapidly replacing the outdated and complex enterprise applications that were built for programmers and highly skilled individuals. Today, user experience is the key deciding factor on why companies and organizations purchase enterprise applications. User experience is not only about colors, fonts, and shapes, but also about simplifying how applications are built around users and how users can quickly accelerate time to value," said R "Ray" Wang, founder and chairman, Constellation Research. "Having applications run on a single code line can improve how organizations manage application enhancements and preserve a consistent and engaging user experience."

"At Intuit, we've learned a lot about what it takes to create a simple and automated experience for customers, and we've shared our lessons learned as a design partner on Workday's new user experience," said Michael McCreary, director of HR services operations, Intuit. "Workday has delivered a completely new interface to help our HR team, employees, and managers more easily uncover the information they need."

"The combination of our new user experience and Workday 21 delivers the visual aesthetic and usability customers are asking for today with the technology underpinnings to ensure they can quickly adapt to the user expectations and business demands of tomorrow," said Joe Korngiebel, vice president, user experience, Workday. "Our users around the world benefit from a more intuitive experience to navigate their HR and financial decisions from the point they land on Workday's brand new homepage."

Additional Information
Please visit the Workday blog for additional perspective on the news, including:

About Workday 
Workday is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for human resources and finance. Founded in 2005, Workday delivers human capital management, financial management, and analytics applications designed for the world's largest organizations. Hundreds of companies, ranging from medium-sized businesses to Fortune 50 enterprises, have selected Workday.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, our expectations for future templates and performance. The words "believe," "may," "will," "anticipate," "intend," "expect," and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Risks include, but are not limited to, those described our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. Workday assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.

Any unreleased services, features, or functions referenced in this document, our website or other press releases or public statements that are not currently available are subject to change at Workday's discretion and may not be delivered as planned or at all. Customers who purchase Workday, Inc. services should make their purchase decisions based upon services, features and functions that are currently available.

© 2014. Workday, Inc. All rights reserved. Workday and the Workday logo are registered trademarks of Workday, Inc.

iPad and iPhone are a registered trademarks of Apple Inc.

All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Contact Information:

Media Contact
Jeff Shadid
Workday
(405) 834-7777
Jeff.Shadid@Workday.com

The Workday Wheel has been replaced with a new homepage that users can quickly and easily personalize to showcase what they need most in Workday. Workday's new worker profile has been enhanced with prompts that take up less space and leave breadcrumbs for quicker and more intuitive navigation. Workday's new unified inbox offers a preview pane with full edit capabilities so users have one consolidated place to view notifications and complete assigned tasks. After a few keystrokes, more intelligent and predictive search yields results that are more contextual to a user's past behavior in Workday. Workday 21 delivers performance reviews on mobile so employees and managers can start, continue, or complete the performance review process as they move between desktop and mobile devices. Workday 21 offers more sophisticated functionality in Workday Financial Management, including enhanced automation to manage pooled and composite assets.
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