Workday, Inc., is an American on‑demand (
cloud-based)
financial management,
human capital management and
Student information system software vendor. Workday was founded by
David Duffield, founder and former CEO of
ERP company
PeopleSoft, along with former PeopleSoft chief strategist
Aneel Bhusri
Aneel Bhusri (born February 14, 1966) is an American business executive. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Workday. He is also a partner at Greylock Partners and was a member of Intel's board of directors between 2014 and 2019. Bhusri h ...
, following
Oracle's acquisition of PeopleSoft in 2005.
In October 2012, Workday launched a successful IPO (
initial public offering) that valued the company at $9.5 billion.
Competitors of Workday include
SAP Successfactors,
Ceridian
Ceridian HCM is an American provider of human resources software and services with employees in the USA, Canada, Europe, Australia and Mauritius. It is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange.
History
Ceridian is a descend ...
and
Oracle.
In 2020, ''
Fortune
Fortune may refer to:
General
* Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck
* Luck
* Wealth
* Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling
* Fortune, in a fortune cookie
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''The Fortune'' (1931 film) ...
'' magazine ranked Workday Inc. at number five on their Fortune List of the Top 100 Companies to Work For in 2020 based on an employee survey of satisfaction. San Francisco Business Times ranked Workday at number two on their Best Places to Work in the Bay in the largest companies category.
History
Workday was founded in March 2005 and launched in November 2006. Initially, it was funded by Duffield and venture capital firm
Greylock Partners. In December 2008, Workday moved its headquarters from
Walnut Creek, California
Walnut Creek is a city in Contra Costa County, California, United States, located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, about east of the city of Oakland. With a total population of 70,127 per the 2020 census, Walnut Creek se ...
, to
Pleasanton, California, where PeopleSoft founder Duffield's prior company was located.
On February 6, 2008, Workday announced that it had reached a definitive agreement to purchase
Cape Clear Software. In May 2008, Workday signed a large contract with
Flextronics to provide human capital management software services. Companies that have publicly disclosed contracts or deployments of Workday include
Aviva
Aviva plc is a British multinational insurance company headquartered in London, England. It has about 18 million customers across its core markets of the United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada. In the United Kingdom, Aviva is the largest general ...
,
Chiquita Brands
Chiquita Brands International Sàrl (), formerly known as Chiquita Brands International Inc. and United Fruit Co., is a Swiss-domiciled American producer and distributor of bananas and other produce. The company operates under a number of su ...
, and other firms.
On April 29, 2009, Workday announced that it secured $75 million in funding led by
New Enterprise Associates. Existing investors Greylock Partners and Workday CEO and co‑founder Dave Duffield also participated in the round.
On October 24, 2011, Workday announced $85 million in new funding, bringing total capital raised to $250 million. Investors in the latest round included
T. Rowe Price
T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. is an American publicly owned global investment management firm that offers funds, subadvisory services, separate account management, and retirement plans and services for individuals, institutions, and financial inter ...
,
Morgan Stanley Investment Management,
Janus, and
Bezos Expeditions.
As of spring 2012, Workday had 310 customers, ranging from mid-sized businesses to
''Fortune'' 500 companies.
In October 2012, Workday launched its
initial public offering (IPO) on the
New York Stock Exchange with
ticker symbol
A ticker symbol or stock symbol is an abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. In short, ticker symbols are arrangements of symbols or characters (generally Latin letters o ...
WDAY. Its shares were priced at $28 and ended trading Friday, October 12, at $48.69, "propelled the start-up to a
market capitalization of nearly $9.5 billion including
unexercised stock
options." It sold 22.75 million
Class A shares, raising $637 million. The IPO raised more cash than any launch in the U.S. technology sector since
Facebook's $16 billion IPO in May 2012. Its shares surged 74% in their IPO, underscoring investor interest in
cloud computing.
In 2016 Workday launched a cloud-based
Student information system to augment its portfolio of financial management and human capital management products.
In 2018 Workday acquired Filip Doušek's company Stories.bi.
The co-CEO of Workday is
Aneel Bhusri
Aneel Bhusri (born February 14, 1966) is an American business executive. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Workday. He is also a partner at Greylock Partners and was a member of Intel's board of directors between 2014 and 2019. Bhusri h ...
, who is a partner with
Greylock Partners and handled senior leadership positions earlier in his career at PeopleSoft. In 2020, Chano Fernandez was promoted to co-CEO. Dave Duffield served as the chairman of the board until his resignation in April 2022, after which Aneel Bhusri took over as the chairman.
In November 2021, Workdays announced its acquisition of VNDLY, startup that helps companies manage external workforce personnel, for $510 million.
Sequoia Capital's Carl Eschenbach replaced Fernandez as co-CEO in December 2022. The company also announced that Eschenbach would become its sole CEO after January 2024, when Bhusri will move to the role of executive chair.
Business model
Workday makes money by selling
subscriptions to its services rather than selling the software outright.
Expense
An expense is an item requiring an outflow of money, or any form of fortune in general, to another person or group as payment for an item, service, or other category of costs. For a tenant, rent is an expense. For students or parents, tuition ...
s are
booked up front when it signs on a new customer but the associated
revenue is
recognized over the life of multiyear agreements. In first quarter 2016, Workday announced annual revenue in excess of $1 billion for the first time ever in fiscal year 2016.
Corporate governance
Duffield holds voting rights to Workday shares that were worth $3.4 billion and Bhusri held rights to shares valued at $1.3 billion. Collectively, they hold 67% of the company's voting shares. This voting structure makes the event of a
hostile takeover
In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (the ''target'') by another (the ''acquirer'' or ''bidder''). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, in contrast to t ...
much less likely.
Product
Workday has released 39 updates to its product line as of September, 2022, its most recent being "2022 R2". It releases a major update every 6 months, every September and March
Workday operates data centers located in
Ashburn, Virginia
Ashburn is a census-designated place (CDP) in Loudoun County, Virginia, United States. At the 2010 United States Census, its population was 43,511, up from 3,393 twenty years earlier. It is northwest of Washington, D.C., and part of the Washin ...
;
Lithia Springs, Georgia
Lithia Springs () is a census-designated place and unincorporated area, formerly incorporated as a city, located in northeastern Douglas County, Georgia, United States. As of the 2020 census, the community had a population of 16,644. The area is ...
;
Portland, Oregon;
Dublin, Ireland;
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban area ...
; and also uses
Amazon Web Services for its primary computing infrastructure platforms in order to accelerate its worldwide expansion.
In February 2014, Workday acquired the startup Identified and its artificial intelligence
Syman to create its Insight Apps line of products. The first products running SYMAN were announced at Workday Rising 2014.
In July 2017, Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri announced that the company had decided to open up its platform to developers, partners and third-party software. As a result, Workday will enter the
Platform as a Service (PaaS) market. Bhusri said the move will allow customers to build custom extensions and applications to work with Workday.
In January 2018, Workday announced that it acquired SkipFlag,
makers of an AI knowledge base that builds itself from a company's internal communications.
Acquisitions
References
External links
*
{{NASDAQ-100
Software companies established in 2005
American companies established in 2005
2012 initial public offerings
Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Companies based in Pleasanton, California
Cloud computing providers
Companies listed on the Nasdaq
Companies in the Nasdaq-100
Human resource management software
ERP software companies
2005 establishments in California
Software companies of the United States