Page 49 - Fortune-November 01, 2018
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is the only company that comes close.” THE FUTURE 50 dress them. In 2016, the company released
(Salesforce, for what it’s worth, was the top a financial planning product for businesses.
Future 50 company last year.) It didn’t catch on. So this June, to fill that
Workday claims its company’s whole hole in its lineup, Workday paid $1.55 bil-
tech-oriented ethos is future-looking. lion to buy Adaptive Insights, a younger
“Companies are running their operations company that was about to go public.
by looking in the rearview mirror with stale 31% The acquisition, Workday’s largest,
data,” says Dermetzis, a wiry and voluble could be costly in nonfinancial ways too.
man who gesticulates impressively while Veteran enterprise-software analyst Patrick
he talks. “These are technological crimes Walravens of JMP Securities praises Work-
that society has accepted.” With Workday’s Share of day for strong leadership, a large market
speedily updated programs, Dermetzis says, revenue that opportunity, and an “enviable competitive
customers always have a clear real-time Workday position.” Still, he expects Workday will
view of their operations, starting with how have challenges integrating Adaptive’s
their people are performing but extending spends on product into its own, “while at the same
to their financial performance and other research & time satisfying the needs of Adaptive’s
nuts-and-bolts areas. development 4,000 customers, the vast majority of
Bhusri, the CEO, attributes Workday’s which run” on systems sold by Workday
technological success to the company’s competitors Oracle and Microsoft.
“tinkering mentality.” When Apple released To maintain momentum to hurdle such
the iPad in 2010, for example, Workday obstacles, Workday counts on motivating
turned loose a small team of recent col- employees, who in turn are incentivized to
lege graduates to create an iPad version of please customers. One of the three met-
their product. “Our people are well versed SECOND ACT rics that determine the size of an annual,
in Hadoop and Spark,” he says, name- CEO Aneel Bhusri all-employee stock grant is hitting 95% cus-
checking two programming tools popular launched Workday tomer satisfaction. (The other two involve
with DIY problem-solvers. after selling People- revenue growth and product milestones.)
Soft, a company
Workday knows its limitations too—and with a very similar One way Workday satisfies customers is
it’s willing to stretch itself financially to ad- core business. by spending lavishly to develop products.
Its annual R&D expenditure, at 31% of
revenues, bests peers Salesforce and Adobe
by that measure. “We are going after a
bigger market than they are,” explains
Robynne Sisco, the company’s copresident
and chief financial officer. “And our prod-
ucts are more complicated.”
Sisco did stints at GE, Ford, Visa, Oracle,
Verisign, and VMWare before joining Work-
day in 2012. Today she plays a lead role in
pushing Workday’s newest line, its offering
for running a company’s financial manage-
ment systems (think accounting, reporting,
and the like). She notes that Workday has
about 2,300 customers, almost all of whom
use its HR software. But far fewer (and only
eight Fortune 500 companies) deploy its
“financials” product.
Bhusri says it has been a “huge undertak-
ing” to make this critical software “cloud
ready” but notes the line is growing 50%
annually. “I would like that to be higher,”
he says. “But I’ll take it.” And if the right COUR T ESY OF WORK DAY
customers sign up, he won’t be shy about
dressing up in costume to celebrate.
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