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Workday pros and cons

Vendor: Workday

4.1 out of 5

55 reviews
91% willing to recommend

2,167 followers

Pros & Cons summary

Workday offers strong integration capabilities with flexible configuration options for third-party connectivity and features robust reporting tools enhancing data accessibility to support decision-making. It promotes user empowerment by allowing benefits management and automates life events, reducing HR workload. Workday excels in financials and HR management but lacks in built-in payroll capabilities and customization ease. Some functionalities are missing for specific regions, and improvements are needed in analytics and connector optimization.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Workday offers robust integration capabilities, including pre-built interfaces for specific vendors and generic integrations that allow data extraction or insertion through configuration.

It consolidates all transactions and configurations into a single in-memory system, eliminating the need to access multiple data sources for information retrieval.

Workday provides comprehensive employee information storage and management facilities, supporting functions like payroll demands efficiently.

The platform features extensive reporting and analytics capabilities that simplify processes such as benefits enrollment and life event updates, reducing the administrative burden on HR departments.

Workday's framework supports easy customizations and configurations to meet federal regulations and company-specific needs, enhancing flexibility and compliance.

CONS

Workday lacks a native payroll system, requiring external solutions for payroll management.

Customization of reports in Workday heavily depends on consultants.

Configuration complexity is a challenge with Workday.

Backend database access is not available in Workday, complicating technical troubleshooting.

Additional costs arise when adding features to a Workday subscription.

Workday Pros review quotes

reviewer1883799

Solution Architect at Zoom Video Communications

Jun 14, 2022

There is a lot to like about it. I really enjoy the business process framework. It's something that's really seamless. It allows you to have people within the flow. They get assigned a task to complete something to approve, etc. That's a really good piece of functionality that Workday offers. Their out-of-the-box reporting framework is also really powerful in terms of what it provides. These would be two things that I would highlight.

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AH

Director of HR at a healthcare company with 11-50 employees

Feb 22, 2021

The solution was very good at reconfiguration and customization of their software. It helped us to meet federal regulations.

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NS

Managing Principal Consultant at Dodai Consulting Corp

Oct 28, 2019

This product is leaps and bounds above the competition. Part of the reason is that it is built with modern technology. It has no legacy coding in it at all.

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Manager for enterprise Solution at PeopleTechGroup

Sep 26, 2023

It is fairly easy to set up

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Director at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 15, 2020

It helps the users to enroll for the benefits automatically and update their life events without the involvement of HR individuals or back-office staff. It enables a person to take action on their own. It reduces the administrative burden on HR and puts the ownership on the person that is going through the life event, whether it is having a child, taking a leave of absence, or something else. There are easy ways to integrate Workday with your common benefits. At least in the USA, it can be integrated with common benefits providers such as Fidelity, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, etc. It has got a connector that is able to connect with the vendor or the third party to which you are trying to send the eligibility file. It basically allows us to automate or set up the tool, and the integration with the provider is a lot quicker than competing tools. When it comes to reporting on just eligibility and SLSA, it is a lot more user-intuitive. Depending on the purpose of what you are doing, you can grant security rights or roles, for example, you can control whether someone is a benefits administrator doing an independent audit. Workday makes it very easy to do that. It significantly simplifies the reporting process.

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RG

Consultant at Deloitte

Dec 20, 2020

The reporting feature is quite easy for a layman to use, and the look and feel of the application is good. Its security is robust. You will never find a use case that cannot be covered.

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reviewer1200543

Director at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Oct 3, 2019

The solution is extremely stable.

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JM

HR Manager at NCSoft

Apr 12, 2024

I like its UI and UX. When we were using Oracle or SAP, the UI/UX wasn't very user-friendly for the employees.

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Mariette Pretorius

Workday Platform Manager / Workday Solutions Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Jan 11, 2023

In terms of customization, while it may not be fully customizable, you can configure the features based on the foundation that Workday offers. This allows you to take the basic features and tailor them to the specific needs of your company or business. It provides a lot of configuration flexibility.

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Sarvesh Kumar Jha

Senior Technology Consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers

Sep 10, 2024

The solution is easy to use and provides great flexibility and security.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 49)

Workday Cons review quotes

reviewer1883799

Solution Architect at Zoom Video Communications

Jun 14, 2022

Workday does have a community site where people can go on and off for suggestions. They call them Brainstorms, and you can vote them up. That is something that they do well, but oftentimes, they seem to be racing to deliver something based on what a competitor is delivering. For example, if they hear SAP has this new functionality and learning that's going to be coming out, they prioritize there, which makes sense, but unfortunately, some of these Brainstorms may get neglected where the product might not be improved as quickly or as needed for the customers. You might be waiting for a year or two to get a feature that you'd like released. They should pay more attention to customer feedback and ensure that customer feedback is an essential part of their product roadmap.

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AH

Director of HR at a healthcare company with 11-50 employees

Feb 22, 2021

The cost of Workday is certainly not inexpensive. It's very pricey.

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NS

Managing Principal Consultant at Dodai Consulting Corp

Oct 28, 2019

It is good that much of the development is based on community input but often that can lead to details being ignored and small, nagging issues are ignored.

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Free Report: Workday Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Workday. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.

824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Manager for enterprise Solution at PeopleTechGroup

Sep 26, 2023

I would really like to see a more robust timekeeping solution in Workday. Currently, most organizations are using Kronos for timekeeping and Workday for HR data. They then integrate Workday with Dimensions to manage time-related activities and payroll processing.

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Director at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 15, 2020

It is very unique as compared to other tools in terms of the employee master data and how it is organized. That's why sometimes the information needs to sit in two different systems because, in Workday, it is organized differently. This issue is not related to benefits. It is more or so related to how you categorize employees. I don't think this is a problem that could be solved. Workday is aware of this. It is one of those kinds of situations that you just got to live with.

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RG

Consultant at Deloitte

Dec 20, 2020

They don't offer any backend database access. This is one limitation that I found in this product. Workday hasn't opened up about what kind of database they are into, which can make it easy for the technical team to emulate issues. It would be good if they can offer backend access to the technical team. It would be helpful if they can also provide a Troubleshooting Guide that we can use to troubleshoot issues. When we have an issue, there are very limited resources to refer to.

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reviewer1200543

Director at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Oct 3, 2019

Setting up reports can be a bit tricky.

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JM

HR Manager at NCSoft

Apr 12, 2024

Workday does not support many Korean language features. So, it will be great if they have some development on the Korean language side – then it will be really powerful in our market.

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Mariette Pretorius

Workday Platform Manager / Workday Solutions Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Jan 11, 2023

One potential feature that could be added is the ability to streamline business processes through quick tips and guided tours. This would allow for a smoother and more guided experience for colleagues as they navigate through different processes and steps. It would be similar to a guidance system or a step-by-step tutorial that could be added after the business process to guide users through it.

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Sarvesh Kumar Jha

Senior Technology Consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers

Sep 10, 2024

If you want to add more features to your subscription, Workday becomes expensive.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 49)

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