Just one year after the industry’s first ever in-depth competitive intelligence report on the Workday Services market, HfS has just published the updated HFS Blueprint Report: Workday Services 2016. We analysed and positioned sixteen Workday service providers according to their execution and innovation capabilities.
So, what’s changed since last year?
What a year it’s been! Workday service providers have been busy investing in service offering expansion, tools and technologies development and talent retention programmes to remain competitive in this hot growth market. There’s also been some consolidation, including:
- The Aon Hewitt acquisition of UK-based Kloud
- KPMG’s acquisition of Towers Watson HR Service Delivery Practice
- The IBM acquisition of Meteorix
- And the Mercer acquisition of CPSG
And we’re sure the consolidation will continue!
Last year’s report focused heavily on service provider’s capabilities to deploy and support the Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) product, as that formed the majority of the market at the time. Since then the Workday Finance Management (FM) application has grown in popularity, with enterprises either deploying this in phase 2 projects, considering HCM and FM together as a platform deployment, and some enterprises even leading with the FM application deployment.
We have seen the focus of work shift. Last year enterprises were largely concentrating on implementing the applications, with lower demand for consulting or management services. Although the focus on implementation remains this year, with buyers still demanding fast deployment cycles, more additional service opportunities have appeared. Particularly, as buyers realize the importance of preparation prior to rolling our any SaaS initiative. We have seen a greater emphasis on Workday readiness services that provide guidance and some visibility of their Workday journey. Plus consulting work that positions Workday at the heart of their HCM and finance business transformation initiatives. Management services were hardly considered last year, but this year, buyers are realizing the need for ongoing, flexible support services to keep their deployments relevant to business requirements and outcomes.
So, all in all, the market has changed that much that it almost felt like doing a completely new Blueprint rather than an update.
So, which service providers stood out?
We should note that all of the providers we included were very strong, which is not surprising, given that Workday works very closely with each of its service partners to provide guidance and assistance. All service providers were either in the As-a-Service Winner’s Circle, High Performers or High Potential categories. In other words, they all had excellent vision of where this market is headed and are investing in services and solutions to meet the emerging demand. This remains however, an immature market, with client demands still largely focused on requiring fast technical deployments. Most client references across the board were unsurprisingly very positive. As a result we have a cluster of providers in the As-a-Service Winner’s Circle this time round. As the market matures and continues to change over the next year, we expect a few clear winners to break away from the pack and create some clear differentiation. DayNine, Aon Hewitt, Deloitte and Collaborative Solutions particularly impressed with their execution capabilities. We saw a lot of impressive innovation, at Accenture, Deloitte and DayNine, IBM, PWC, Appirio and KPMG. And OneSource Virtual continues to standout with its focus on BPaaS solutions.
What are we expecting next year?
More consolidation! The acquisition game is not over and we expect some more consolidation before we refresh this Blueprint in approximately 12 months. Those who acquired this past year, have a massive opportunity to integrate, market and deliver the combined capabilities to strengthen their position in this market. And we expect the service providers who invest in developing consulting and management services to do well as demand for these services picks up in the next year. We think there’s a high chance the grid could be very different again next time round! Stick with HfS to monitor the important changes in this rapidly evolving market!
Posted in : SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and BPaaS
