Advances in Managing Data Create New Levels of Insight and Performance Accountability for Today’s Agile Organizations Workday Accounting Center represents a fundamental change in the way finance manages operational data. Workday Accounting Center helps customers quickly turn data into insight. For Insurance customers this means gaining insight into the policies and claims driving their profits and losses via this dashboard. Customers can drill from this dashboard down to the underlying source data and accounting generated in the Workday Accounting Center. PLEASANTON, Calif., Oct. 29, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Workday Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY), a leader in enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, today announced availability of Workday Accounting Center and machine learning (ML)-driven predictive forecasts for Workday Adaptive Planning, as well as additional functionality across its finance offerings, to drive insights, agility, and efficiency. These innovations transform the way customers engage with data, bringing new levels of visibility and control to the office of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Today’s finance teams are challenged to achieve greater agility amidst the ever-changing business landscape heightened by the pandemic. Real-time data and insights are key to agility, yet many finance organizations have disconnected data sources and legacy accounting systems, which can no longer keep pace in today’s changing world. Valuable time is spent collecting, reconciling, and validating data instead of delivering trusted insights to the organization. To address these critical challenges, Workday continues to advance its cloud planning and financial management solutions with ML and data management capabilities.Creating Agility with an Intelligent Data Foundation Workday is going beyond the boundaries of traditional ERP systems to solve a problem that has plagued the industry for decades—keeping up with the ever-increasing volume of operational data and turning it into accounting and insight faster and more efficiently. Now commercially available, with early adopters such as CNA and Shelter Insurance currently in production, Workday Accounting Center represents a fundamental change in the way finance manages operational data.Workday Accounting Center enables customers to ingest operational data, enrich it with meaningful attributes, and transform it into accounting. This allows customers to manage operational and financial data from multiple sources with a single point of control across the enterprise.For example, with Workday Accounting Center, an insurance company is 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 drill down and visibility into the source transactions, which is called data lineage. This eliminates the need for finance teams to rely on information technology (IT), with cost savings estimated to be upwards of 50 percent to maintain accounting rules. Combining Workday Prism Analytics and Workday Financial Management creates an intelligent data foundation that also fuels ML-enabled transactions and processes.Machine Learning Powers Intelligent Planning, Delivers Predictive Forecasts Planning has become even more critical for organizations managing through the pandemic, with forecasting activity increasing up to 30X from pre-pandemic operations. To enable forecasting with even greater accuracy, Workday continues to evolve its intelligent planning capabilities, which allows planning without limits and anticipates what’s next with greater accuracy and confidence, harnessing ML at the core.Using time series prediction—the process of modeling events over a period of time to make more accurate predictions—Workday applies the power of ML to enable predictive analytics with Workday Adaptive Planning. The ML algorithms use historical and current data to predict likely outcomes for revenue, expenses, and other critical business variables creating a predictive forecast. Predictive forecasts are created based on thousands or even hundreds of thousands of data points aggregated from across the enterprise, including sales, HR, marketing, and manufacturing data, for example. Using anomaly detection in Workday Adaptive Planning, anomalies are identified and automatically flag a planner about a potential issue. New reporting capabilities make it easy to compare an ML-driven forecast against a planner’s forecast to detect potential problems before either forecast is acted on, so organizations can make better decisions with confidence.With predictive forecasting embedded in the analytics engine of Workday Adaptive Planning, it will continue to learn over time, and the more data is added, even greater insights will be gained. The predictive forecasting capability is available now to all Workday Adaptive Planning customers.Continuous Innovation for the Office of Finance The latest release from Workday also includes key advances for customers in the office of the CFO focused on enabling deeper insight and accountability for performance. Notable advancements include: * Embedded ad hoc analysis on real-time data. The availability of Discovery Boards reflects Workday’s enduring focus on embedding analytics in core finance applications. With Discovery Boards, accounting and finance teams are able to easily see and analyze data in real time on live Workday transactions—all in one system. With access to nearly 200 data sources across core financial management and spend management, customers can easily and securely perform ad-hoc analysis with an embedded drag-and-drop visualization tool. * Unified planning and execution. Workday customers can now publish plans from Workday Adaptive Planning directly to Workday Financial Management and vice versa, making it easy to compare actuals to plan in the same system, further streamlining finance processes. This provides easier access for real-time analysis and compresses the planning and execution cycle for greater agility.Comments on the News “We continue to deliver on our vision for the changing world of finance by expanding data management, self-service analyses, and machine learning-fueled processes to help finance leaders better navigate continuous disruption and change,” said Barbara Larson, general manager, Workday Financial Management. “These innovations unlock the power of data in new ways, empowering customers with eye-opening insights that were previously difficult–or even impossible–to glean. Together with our customers we’re creating frictionless finance processes and best practices that deliver greater value to the organization.”“With Workday Accounting Center, we’ve been able to retire our custom legacy accounting hub solution and have simplified our technology environment, improved flexibility and scalability, and provided greater business ownership and control of software to our accounting and finance team,” said Bharat Shahdadpuri, AVP, Workday Finance & Data Management, CNA, one of the largest U.S. commercial property and casualty insurance companies. “Now, financial data is provided to accountants using business language, without the need for technical interpretation. Financial reporting is done in Workday, and we’ve been able to improve the systems used for financial analysis, data lineage, and error correction. And, we’re pleased that we’ve already reduced our cost of ownership while also being able to introduce new capabilities faster.”“CFOs and CIOs recognize that they must embrace new digital technologies in order to manage the ever-increasing volume and sources of data required today,” said R “Ray” Wang, founder and principal analyst, Constellation Research, Inc. “And because it’s so challenging to move off of legacy systems, leading companies recognize that they need a solution that can scale and evolve over the next decade and beyond. Intelligent data, machine learning, and a robust ecosystem are critical factors for companies when choosing their next partner for financial management systems.”Additional Information  * See a demonstration of Workday Accounting Center   * See a demonstration of Workday Adaptive Planning * Read the blog “How planning is evolving to keep pace with a changing world” 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 StatementsThis 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 Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2020 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.© 2020 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.Media Contact Diane Orr Workday media@workday.comA photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/949fe2d8-d8cb-4993-b11b-0ac41b6078e1

Positioned as a Leader for Fourth Year in a Row Based on Completeness of Vision and Ability to ExecuteLONDON, Oct. 28, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Workday, Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY), a leader in enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, today announced it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the Leaders quadrant of the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Financial Planning & Analysis1 for the fourth year in a row. Today’s business environment requires continuous planning to adapt to ever-changing economic, health, and geopolitical impacts. As a result, finance leaders are turning to Workday to help them model, forecast, and analyse their business with a proven planning solution. Workday Adaptive Planning2 delivers powerful modelling that’s easy to use, allowing customers to embrace enterprise-wide planning for greater agility. To date, it has been selected by more than 5,300 customers, including American Family Insurance, Denny’s, IBM, Microsoft, and South Shore Health, to manage their financial, sales, workforce, and/or operational planning in the cloud.Choice and Flexibility to Accelerate Planning Workday is committed to delivering best-in-class enterprise planning as both a standalone solution and as an integral part of the Workday suite, accelerating the adoption of planning in companies of all sizes by giving customers choice and flexibility for their digital finance transformation. For customers choosing standalone planning, Workday Adaptive Planning has proven integrations with hundreds of human capital management (HCM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, as well as commercial and proprietary data warehouses. This means that financial and operational data easily combine into a single source for truth for company-wide planning.For customers choosing Workday Adaptive Planning as part of a larger finance transformation, Workday offers a broad portfolio of finance applications serving the office of the CFO, including Workday Financial Management, Workday Prism Analytics, Workday Accounting Centre, and solutions for spend management. Together they deliver a deep and comprehensive system for enterprise planning and analysis, record to report, contract to cash, and source to pay, enabling customers to streamline financial processes and operate with agility in today’s changing world.Continuous Focus on Enterprise Planning Innovation Workday is continually investing in enterprise planning to support customers as they face unprecedented challenges in planning for an uncertain future. Specific advances include: * Continuous product innovation. Over the past year, new Workday Adaptive Planning product features and capabilities have focused on machine learning, visualisation, and integration. With feature releases automatically delivered twice annually along with weekly updates, these innovations continue the flagship ease of use of Workday Adaptive Planning, while delivering even more sophisticated modelling capabilities and new levels of visibility into enterprise performance. Customers can now automatically detect errors in planning assumptions, interactively see changes in charts and graphs with data changes, and easily deliver plans across the organisation with the click of a button. * Enterprise scalability. Workday Adaptive Planning continues to scale to support large enterprise customers for company-wide modelling and planning. The solution’s in-memory engine supports virtually unlimited dimensions, ideal for customers with demanding, global operations, particularly in the current climate when detailed planning for a broad range of scenarios is required. Additionally, Workday has certified a number of large Partners on Workday Adaptive Planning, including Accenture, Deloitte, and KPMG, further expanding implementation options available for customers. These organisations offer support and services tailored for large enterprises transitioning to cloud infrastructure. * Return to work solutions. Finance and HR leaders are in a critical position to help assess the options and impacts associated with returning to work, including how the business can grow and react differently in the future. Workday is delivering return to work solutions, which include workforce planning, return to the workplace planning, and financial planning solutions that enable customers to operate with agility during this time of uncertainty. Customer Recognition Gartner Peer Insights documents customer experience through verified ratings and peer reviews. As of October 6, 2020, Workday customer reviews average a score of 4.9 out of 5 based on 22 reviews for the Cloud Financial Planning and Analysis Solutions market and include the following: * “Outstanding planning tool—best in class and ahead of competitors,” — senior finance director, healthcare industry [read full review] * “Adaptive Insights brings to the table a financial planning solution with many guardrails out of the box that streamlines implementation. Data integration with external sources proved to be straightforward and works without glitch.” — senior finance manager, services industry [read full review]Comments on the News “The role of planning seemingly changed overnight with the impact of the pandemic, turning enterprise planning processes into mission-critical functions,” said Kshitij Dayal, General Manager, Planning Products, Workday. “Whether standalone or as part of the Workday suite, Workday Adaptive Planning scales with companies to help our customers achieve the business agility today’s environment demands. We believe being named a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud Financial Planning & Analysis Solutions is based on our ability to deliver a powerful solution that supports a continuous planning process for the largest of enterprises.”“When COVID struck, we saw a nearly 50 percent drop in patient revenue within one month’s time, due to plummeting ER volumes and cancellations of elective surgeries,” said Alex Dali, CFO, of ApolloMD, a leader in the clinical outsourcing services industry. “Fortunately, ApolloMD had already moved to a continuous planning process using Workday Adaptive Planning. Our team went from flat-footed to nimble in no time, moving into rapid-fire scenario planning to keep up with changing operational conditions, enabling ApolloMD to confidently make key business decisions.”“COVID has accelerated the move to the cloud for many of our clients, with planning emerging as one of the top priorities for digital transformation,” said Jason Dess, national strategy and operations finance leader at Deloitte. “Companies recognise that having a single planning system in the cloud gives large organisations a level of visibility and agility that can’t be matched with legacy tools. Adding Workday Adaptive Planning to our practice allows us to offer clients a leading planning solution that can be expanded companywide, scaling both in size and across multiple functions.”Additional Information * Read the blog “Workday Named a Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Financial Planning and Analysis Solutions” * Read a complimentary copy of the Gartner report on the Workday website * See a demonstration of Workday Adaptive Planning 1Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Cloud Financial Planning & Analysis,” by Robert Anderson, Greg Leiter, John Van Decker, 6 October 2020. Previously listed as Adaptive Insights since Workday announced its acquisition of the company in June 2018.2Adaptive Insights is now called Workday Adaptive Planning as of May 2020.Gartner Disclaimer: Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in our research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organisation and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.Gartner Peer Insights reviews constitute the subjective opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences and do not represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates.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. Organisations 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 materialise 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 quarter ended July 31, 2020, 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.© 2020 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.Media ContactPatrick Evenden Workday patrick.evenden@workday.comAlexandria Bell Chameleon PR workday@madebychameleon.com

The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Advanced Micro Devices, Workday, Moody’s, Ericsson and State Street Corp

(Bloomberg) — Dire earnings results at SAP SE wiped out more than 35 billion euros ($41 billion) from the German software company’s market value in a matter of minutes, sending a warning to tech investors about the health of the business software industry.In a surprise release late Sunday, SAP, one of Europe’s largest tech companies, cut its revenue forecast for the full year and said it expected the fresh wave of Covid-19 lockdowns to hurt demand through the first half of 2021. The results caused shares to fall the most ever in a single day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg since 1989.SAP’s collapse caused the wider tech market to drop, with Europe’s Stoxx Technology index falling 7.6%, its biggest one-day loss since March. Shares of cloud-applications giant Salesforce.com Inc. fell 4.1% at 2:28 p.m. in New York. Oracle Corp. — SAP’s main rival — dropped 3.9%.“SAP is a bellwether stock for European technology and global software,” said Citigroup Global Markets analyst Amit Harchandani. “They have an insight into Fortune 500 companies and when SAP tells you they see headwinds, there will be some truth to the fact that some of the customers are challenged and don’t have the money to spend.”For some investors, SAP’s results have called into question the wider assumption that software companies will prosper during the pandemic, due to millions of employees working from home. Many of these companies, which deliver applications or services over the internet, have so far resisted the worst effects of a pandemic-fueled recession, and some have thrived while businesses operate remotely.Some major SAP clients may be reconsidering signing large contracts to update their software, as the pandemic continues to limit any global economic recovery. SAP has a wide range of products, many of which rely on winning and renewing major new deals for databases, as well as accounting, expenses or human resources software. Unsurprisingly, SAP said business travel had been particularly hard hit over the past quarter.Still, SAP has fared worse during the pandemic than many of its software peers. The company said in April that the virus had hindered new business, prompting worries that software vendors around the world might underperform. A few companies later weakened their forecasts, but most reported healthy growth. More recently, San Francisco-based Salesforce said in August that revenue climbed 29% to $5.15 billion in the previous quarter, and raised its revenue projection for the year.SAP’s poor results and weak outlook may suggest that a recovery for vendors of on-premise software — based on a company’s own network rather than on the internet — could take longer than anticipated, as clients continue to delay major IT upgrades, analysts at Citi wrote in a note Monday.Oracle, based in Redwood City, California, may be more affected than cloud-based providers since it offers database and financial-planning tools like SAP, and has a large base of customers who buy software for their own server farms. Last month, Oracle reported a return to sales growth in the previous quarter after years of largely stagnant revenue expansion, due to rising demand for its cloud-based products and falling interest in everything else. Oracle projected its sales would grow 1% to 3% in the current period.“The bigger surprise to us was the sharp deceleration in [SAP’s] cloud backlog numbers,” said Anurag Rana, analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “Given that Workday and Salesforce.com had good quarters with healthy pipelines, it seems that could be losing share to pure-play cloud vendors, which would make it hard for them to attain any meaningful recovery in the near-term.”Investors now have an anxious wait before the major U.S. cloud software providers such as Salesforce, Workday Inc. and Oracle announce earnings in December.(Corrects spelling of analyst in 10th paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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