Workday Upends Legacy Technology With Innovations for the Changing World of Finance

Data and Machine Learning Innovations Enable Greater Operational Efficiencies and Faster, More Strategic Decision-Making to Help Boost Business Agility

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SINGAPORE - Media OutReach - 16 October 2019 – Workday Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY), a leader in
enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, today unveiled new advancements across Workday
Financial Management and the Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud to help
enterprise customers better navigate the changing world of finance. 

At Workday Rising, the company’s annual customer conference, Workday highlighted
how organizations will be able to reimagine their businesses with a new
application, Workday Accounting Center, and machine learning-powered
capabilities such as anomaly detection for accounting entries. Leveraging the Power of One–one source for data, one security
model, one user experience, and one community–Workday is uniquely suited to
deliver solutions to help enterprise customers streamline financial processes
and make faster, data-driven decisions.

 

With Workday, businesses
have a single
system to plan, execute, analyze, and extend–powered by machine learning, and
backed by an unwavering commitment to customer service. Using advanced
analytics to surface trends and insights, and machine learning to automate
manual processes and save time, Workday continuously innovates so organizations
can increase their business agility.

 

Innovations
to Transform Finance and Planning

Today’s
chief financial officers (CFOs) and finance leaders are faced with constant
change and new challenges in a rapidly-evolving environment driven by
technological advancements, shifting business models, and new competitors. This
leads to mounting pressure to innovate faster, provide more accurate forecasts,
and deliver insights that will help the business quickly respond and adapt to
market changes. With these new responsibilities at hand, CFOs find themselves
in the driver’s seat of navigating organizational transformation. 

With new solutions announced
at Workday Rising, customers are able to:

Streamline
Accounting Processes With External and Internal Data

Workday
will help business users better manage the end-to-end process of creating
journal entries and reporting on enriched data from sources outside of
Workday–all in one centralized solution. 

• Workday
  Accounting Center, a new application
  built on Workday Prism Analytics, will extend the power of Workday Financial
  Management to give users greater ability to manage operational data from
  multiple sources with a single point of control across the enterprise. For
  example, with Workday Accounting Center, an insurance company will be able to
  load its operational transactions–such as claims or policy data–into the system, create accounting (journal) entries for those
  transactions, and then report and analyze on those transactions with full data
  lineage. 

 

Automate Labor-Intensive
Processes With Machine Learning 

Workday leverages data
science capabilities, which span state-of-the-art neural networks and classic
machine learning techniques, to intelligently automate traditionally
labor-intensive finance processes. With this approach to machine learning, the
system is able to better understand the relationships between financial
entities. For example, it can learn about the relationships between cost
centers, spend categories, projects, regions, currencies, and more to
understand that expenses like taxis, airfare, and hotels are all related. This
approach enables various features that help save time and resources,
including: 

• Journal
  insights, a new feature for
  Workday Financial Management customers, can detect anomalies in accounting
  entries by comparing them to other entries for similar transactions. This
  enables accounting teams to identify anomalies as they occur, so they can
  correct reconciliation issues as they happen rather than during the crunch of
  month-end close.
• Supplier
  invoice automation, a new capability for
  Workday Financial Management customers, routes invoices that require attention
  to specific workers based on past assignments and efficiency with similar
  work. In its initial release, supplier invoice automation uses rules-based
  work queues and header-level scanning to direct invoices to the right person. 
• Expenses
  via natural workspaces
  makes it possible to enter expenses in Workday using the Workday for Slack
  integration. For example, when an employee uploads an image or photograph of a
  receipt in Slack, Workday Expenses applies optical character recognition (OCR)
  to automatically identify critical data, such as the amount to be reimbursed,
  for the user to confirm before submitting for approval. 
• Anomaly
  detection for plans, a new machine
  learning-driven capability in Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud, will
  enable customers to catch potential data entry errors in plans whether they are
  budgets, forecasts, or scenarios. This feature uses machine learning to analyze
  past data to detect anomalies, taking into account seasonality and other
  historical variations and trends, and alerts users of potential errors. 

 

Make
Faster, More Informed Decisions

Every user can be
empowered to make smarter, data-driven decisions with operational insights the
business needs, and capabilities that enable a more seamless transition from
planning to execution.

• Discovery Boards, a drag-and-drop data
  discovery feature originally available as
  part of Workday Prism Analytics, will be made available to all Workday
  Financial Management customers as part of their subscription. These enable users to
  quickly visualize data to understand their financials, detect patterns, and
  discover insights. For example, financial planning and analysis (FP&A) or
  accounting teams can leverage Discovery Boards to uncover trends in revenue or
  expenses, and then analyze by ledger account, cost center, or any other
  dimension in their data sources. Through charts and pivot tables, they can see
  trends by product or by region, and perform detailed variance analysis.
• Plan to execute, a new planning capability
  available to customers using Adaptive
  Insights Business Planning Cloud and Workday Financial Management, is a key step in the journey to unify Adaptive Insights
  with Workday. With this deeper
  unification, FP&A professionals can publish their budget plans in Workday,
  giving the budget owners the ability to compare spend to plan and automate
  spend controls according to the approved budget.

 

Comment on the News

“As the finance function
continues to evolve, CFOs and finance leaders are looking for tools that will
help their teams focus on more strategic work and innovate in a way that
enhances revenue,” said Barbara Larson, general manager, Workday Financial
Management. “Workday is weaving new technologies such as machine learning and
advanced analytics into every aspect of our accounting and finance solutions to
save time and enable faster, data-driven decisions. By creating more
efficiencies across the board, we can help drive agility and immediate business
value for our customers’ benefit.”

Additional Information 

• See how Workday is
  innovating for the changing world of finance.
• Read the blog “Machine Learning Across Workday Products: Delivering Undeniable
  Business Value to Customers” by
  Sayan Chakraborty, senior vice president, tools and technology, Workday.
• See how Workday is
  helping organizations get ahead, and stay ahead, in the changing world of IT.

Availability 

All products and
features are available or planned for availability in the next calendar year.

About Workday

Workday is a leading provider of
enterprise cloud applications for finance and human
resources. Founded in 2005, Workday
delivers financial management, human capital management, planning, and
analytics applications designed for the world‘s largest companies,
educational institutions, and government agencies. Organizations 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, statements regarding
the expected performance and benefits of Workday’s offerings. The words
“believe,” “may,” “will,” “estimate,” “continue,” “anticipate,” “intend,”
“expect,” “seek,” “plan,” “project,” and similar expressions are intended to
identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are
subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. If the risks materialize or
assumptions prove incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the
results implied by these forward-looking statements. Risks include, but are not
limited to, risks described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC), including our Form 10-Q for the fiscal year ended July 31,
2019 and our future reports that we may file with the SEC from time to time,
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.

 

© 2019. Workday, Inc. All
rights reserved. Workday and the Workday logo are registered trademarks of
Workday, Inc. All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered
trademarks of their respective holders.