Most organizations likely agree that innovating and transforming enterprise finance is critical in today's dynamic business landscape.
Well, Workday Financial Management offers a next-generation system to help organizations streamline financial operations, planning, and analysis like never before...
In this post, we'll review Workday Financial Management's core capabilities, implementation approaches, and key benefits that enable the transformation of enterprise finance.
Introduction to Workday Financial Management
Workday Financial Management is a cloud-based, enterprise-level financial management software solution. It offers modern capabilities to streamline financial operations and provide real-time visibility into financial data.
What is Workday Financial Management?
Workday Financial Management is an innovative financial system designed for the way people work today. Key capabilities include:
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Cloud-based financial management: Access financial data anytime, anywhere with an intuitive user interface optimized for mobile devices.
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Continuous accounting: Support real-time financial processes with continuous calculations and reporting.
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Intelligent insights: Leverage embedded analytics and machine learning to surface financial insights.
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Unified solution: Manage core financials, planning, projects, procurement, expenses, and more in one seamless system.
Benefits of Workday Financial Management
Key benefits of Workday Financial Management include:
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Real-time visibility into finances through continuous accounting processes and reporting.
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Increased efficiency by eliminating redundant manual processes.
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Data-driven decisions enabled by embedded analytics and machine learning-driven insights.
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Agility to quickly adapt to changing business conditions.
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Lower TCO compared to legacy on-premise financial systems.
Key Features and Tools
Notable Workday Financial Management features and tools include:
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Configurable real-time reporting for financial analytics.
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Natural language queries via Workday Assistant to easily access financial data.
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Intelligent anomaly detection to identify potential issues.
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Flexible workflows to map financial processes.
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Robust security controls and access management tools.
In summary, Workday Financial Management brings next-generation capabilities to organizations seeking to transform enterprise finance for the digital age.
Core Financial Capabilities
Workday Financial Management provides a robust set of core financial capabilities to streamline key finance processes.
General Ledger
Workday General Ledger enables real-time posting and analysis with embedded controls. Key features include:
- Configurable chart of accounts
- Automated journal entries
- Real-time reporting
- Audit trail tracking
By centralizing the general ledger on Workday, finance teams gain greater visibility and control over financial data.
Accounts Receivable and Billing
Workday provides automated accounts receivable and billing processes to improve cash flow. Capabilities include:
- Customer master data management
- Invoice creation and delivery
- Payment application and cash receipting
- Collections management
- Revenue recognition
With integrated AR/Billing, organizations can reduce DSO, accelerate cash application, and minimize billing disputes.
Expenses and Invoicing
Workday Expenses and Invoicing simplifies supplier invoice processing and expense report management. Features include:
- Expense reporting with policy controls
- Supplier invoices with 2-way or 3-way matching
- Auditing and analytics
- Supplier portal
Centralizing expenses and invoicing in Workday increases compliance, drives savings through improved policy enforcement, and provides visibility into spending.
Accounting and Tax Management
Workday enables streamlined accounting close and tax compliance processes. Capabilities include:
- Journal entry management
- Account reconciliations
- Financial reporting and disclosure
- Tax provisioning and filing
With Workday, finance teams can reduce close times, minimize audit risk, and ensure tax compliance.
By providing this robust set of financial capabilities on a single cloud platform, Workday Financial Management delivers real-time visibility, global consistency, and operational efficiency for enterprise finance.
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Planning, Reporting and Analysis
Workday Financial Management provides industry-leading planning, reporting, and analysis capabilities to empower finance teams with actionable data and insights.
Financial Planning
Workday offers robust financial planning tools for forecasting, budgeting, and modeling future performance. Native integration with Workday HCM and other operational data enables continuous planning based on real-time data. Key features include:
- Rolling forecasts
- Budgeting and scenario modeling
- Workforce planning
- What-if analysis
- Drill-down to transactional details
By consolidating financial planning into a single system, finance teams can improve agility, accuracy, and analytics.
Reporting and Analysis
Self-service reporting and multi-dimensional analysis enable finance users to easily visualize and explore financial data. Customizable reports and visualizations provide insights into spending, profitability, workforce costs, and other KPIs. Features include:
- Interactive dashboards
- Self-service formatted/ad hoc reports
- Drill-down analysis
- Data discovery tools
- Visualizations (charts, graphs, etc.)
Unifying transactions and analytics in one cloud platform eliminates data silos and manual reporting processes.
Dashboards and Scorecards
Real-time dashboards and scorecards give finance leaders visibility into critical business metrics across the enterprise. Interactive charts display KPIs such as revenue, costs, cash flow, headcount, and more. Users can tailor views by business dimensions like region, product line, department, and custom categories.
External Data Integration
Workday enables customers to incorporate external operational data from other enterprise systems into financial planning and reporting. This provides a more complete picture by linking headcount, facilities, inventory, manufacturing, and other operational metrics to financial plans and actuals. The unified data foundation powers advanced analytics across finance and operations.
Implementing Workday Financial Management
Deployment Approaches
Workday offers both cloud and on-premises deployment options for Financial Management. The cloud option hosts Workday in their secure data centers, eliminating infrastructure costs and management for customers. The on-premises option allows the Workday application to be deployed directly on a customer's servers.
Key considerations for deployment approach include:
- Cost: Cloud is lower upfront cost. On-premises has higher upfront but lower ongoing costs.
- Customization: On-premises allows for more customization options.
- Security: Cloud leverages Workday's enterprise-grade security. On-premises allows companies to control security protocols.
- Access and availability: Cloud offers high availability. On-premises is dependent on internal infrastructure.
Most customers opt for cloud deployment for faster implementation and lower TCO. On-premises is typically chosen by organizations with specialized customization or security needs.
Change Management
Adopting Workday Financial Management involves significant business change. Proper change management ensures smooth transition and high user adoption. Key strategies include:
- Executive sponsorship: Secure executive buy-in and promote leaders as change champions
- Communication plan: Provide regular updates and training opportunities to employees
- User readiness assessment: Evaluate employees' change readiness and address gaps with coaching
- Reinforcement mechanisms: Incentivize usage of Workday and participation in training
Getting leadership and end-users prepared well ahead of the deployment mitigates resistance to change. Maintaining open communication channels also helps sustain engagement.
Integration and Data Migration
Workday provides standard integration tools to connect with existing systems:
- Workday Studio: Build custom integrations and migrate data into Workday
- Workday Cloud Connector: Seamlessly connect Workday to web services and enterprise applications
- Workday Payroll Interface: Integrate payroll systems via cloud service
Migrating legacy financial data requires planning and governance:
- Data mapping: Map data from source systems to Workday objects
- Data validation: Perform test runs to catch and fix errors
- Data governance: Enforce controls and standards throughout process
Sufficient time and resources should be allocated to ensure high quality data migration.
Training and Adoption
Workday and implementation partners provide training programs to upskill finance users:
- Web-based training: Self-paced courses on Workday basics
- Instructor-led training: Virtual sessions to learn financial processes
- Change champion training: Equip power users to support adoption
Additional strategies to drive adoption include:
- Gamification through badges and leaderboards: Encourage engagement through friendly competition
- Employee advocacy programs: Recognize top contributors sharing Workday knowledge
Upskilling users and making adoption rewarding helps realize the full value of Workday Financial Management.
Conclusion and Key Takeaways
Workday Financial Management provides innovative solutions to transform and modernize enterprise finance. By unifying financial processes, systems, and data onto a single cloud platform, Workday enables organizations to streamline operations, gain visibility, and leverage data to drive strategic decisions.
Transforming Enterprise Finance
Workday Financial Management brings finance processes like accounting, financial planning, revenue management, spend management, and more onto one unified cloud platform. This eliminates silos and disparate systems, allowing seamless integration and automation of financial tasks. Key benefits include:
- Unified data and processes for end-to-end visibility into finance operations
- Continuous updates to ensure compliance with the latest regulations
- Intelligent automation of manual processes to increase efficiency
- Embedded analytics and reporting for data-driven decisions
By innovating financial management technology, Workday enables organizations to transform legacy finance functions into strategic business assets.
Key Benefits for Organizations
The innovate approach of Workday Financial Management delivers tangible benefits for enterprises including:
- Lower operational costs through process automation and elimination of legacy systems
- Improved efficiency by unifying siloed processes and providing real-time finance data
- Reduced risk with continuous regulatory compliance and audit controls
- Better decisions powered by embedded analytics and enterprise-wide visibility
Additional benefits like faster period closes, increased agility to scale globally, and robust security also enable long term growth.
Considering Workday for your Business
As you evaluate modern finance solutions for your organization, keep the following aspects of Workday in mind:
- It goes beyond basic accounting software to offer full financial management capabilities
- The single system eliminates integration needs between disparate finance applications
- Workday easily scales globally to support business growth into new markets
- Real-time finance data empowers strategic decisions across the enterprise
For finance innovation that drives operational efficiency, insights, and strategic growth, Workday Financial Management warrants strong consideration. Reach out for a customized demo showing how Workday can transform finance for your business needs.
