Workday's new Professional Services suite
Anyone who's ever worked in professional services knows that the focus there on people and billable projects can open up a world of specialized requirements from any supporting business software. With that very distinction in mind, Workday on Thursday unveiled a new suite of financial and human-resources tools designed specifically for professional services users.
Offering functionality for both financial management and human capital management, Workday Professional Services Automation aims to give companies a unified alternative to the patchwork of often-disconnected solutions that many currently rely on. A single system delivers insights and analytics regarding people, revenue, expenses and profitability, allowing customers to optimize project performance, Workday said.
Workday HCM tools, for instance, are designed to make it easier for an entire organization to collaborate on recruiting, staffing, development and retention of talent. To staff a new client team, resource and project managers can search through internal talent pools, including full-time and contingent workers, to find people with the availability, skills and competencies for the role. If external candidates are needed, Workday Recruiting can help open a job requisition and begin the hiring process.
Embedded analytics and reporting capabilities, meanwhile, enable organizations to drill down into resource-utilization reports, for example, to make sure they're maximizing the time billable employees spend on revenue-generating projects. In a similar vein, resource managers can view resource-demand reports to better understand incoming work and address staffing needs accordingly.
Workday's financial-management tools, on the other hand, help finance teams support the billing, revenue-recognition and financial-reporting needs of each client or project. Finance specialists can automate project billing, for instance, to support evolving client needs and business demands.
Finally, mobile capabilities in Workday PSA allow workers to access insights and take action wherever they happen to be. An employee could snap a photo and submit an expense receipt on a mobile phone, for example.
Also on Thursday, Workday announced the general availability of Workday Talent Insights, the first of a suite of applications it announced last November. Powered by predictive analytics, the new tool gives users a way to identify top performers at risk of leaving their company, among other capabilities.
Both new offerings are available now as part of Workday 24, the company's latest release.
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