As part of Workday's push beyond traditional cloud-based HR software, CEO Aneel Bhusri (pictured) has been expanding a PSA (professional services automation) platform to feature more capabilities. But it's not like the PSA platforms I've covered during an earlier tour of duty.
Workday PSA "unifies people management, project and resource management, time and expense tracking, revenue and cost management, and reporting and analytics in one global system," according to the company. Workday says its PSA platform has four core areas of focus:
- Optimize people management, finding the right employees and contractors with the right skills for specific projects.
- Accurately forecast resources and plan projects. For example, project or portfolio managers can drill down into resource utilization reports to make sure they are maximizing the time billable employees spend on revenue-generating projects, Workday asserts.
- Streamline financial aspects of the business, empowering finance teams to support specific billing and revenue recognition requirements for each customer or project.
- Drive mobile productivity, allowing employees to update the system, submit timesheets and more from smartphones or tablets.
Same Acronym, Different PSA Focus
Instead of trying to compete with highly specialized PSA offerings from the likes of Autotask and ConnectWise, I think Workday is specifically countering NetSuite PSA and NetSuite OpenAir.
My reasoning: NetSuite grew up in the cloud ERP market. Workday grew up in the cloud HR market. Now, they're on a collision course -- each introducing more and more business management capabilities to their respective SaaS platforms.
Moreover, Workday is striving to apply data science and machine learning to its talent software. The ultimate goal: Help HR organizations to reduce employee turnover through analytics. With a healthy dose of PSA tossed into the mix...
