Major takeaway from Workday Rising
Workday Rising 2022 has come to a close with some big announcements from the cloud ERP solution. Among other things, The top three themes for healthcare CIOs to consider are:
Workday is doubling down on its partner ecosystem while expanding its Extend technology platform in exciting directions.
Workday skills ecosystem helps organizations import relevant skills data from third-party systems into Workday.
Healthcare customer grows with the maturity of the supply chain module.
Partner accelerator using Extend
Workday plans to expand its partner ecosystem to double partner consulting capacity in the next three years. I attended the announcement of the partner accelerator program, a joint partnership initiative with Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG, and PwC. They aim to help customers adopt Workday solutions with lower risk and faster time to value.
The partner accelerator's solutions will be built on top of the Extend platform. This is important for CIOs to note that this announcement is focused on extending Workday's functionality rather than developing an app for the marketplace. There are presently over 750 Extend applications available.
Workday Skills
The announcement of Workday's skills cloud allows organizations to securely and quickly bring skills data into and out of Workday. With this new capability, companies can get a more in-depth look at workforce skills and provide employees with better experiences.
Workday's skills cloud was created in collaboration with clients Accenture, Sun Life, and others. Additionally, software alliance agreements were made with Aon, Degreed, and SkyHIVE to help businesses import relevant skill data from external systems into Workday.
Healthcare growth is hot
We've seen a significant increase in healthcare organizations choosing Workday as their cloud ERP system of choice. Most healthcare provider companies are now focusing their attention on the back office, having spent years concentrating on their clinical portfolio optimization. Workday's success is also attributable to the fact that they developed the supply chain module for healthcare.
Top of mind for healthcare decision-makers
It's been great watching Workday mature its product over the last several years, as they've refined it for the healthcare sector. Healthcare supply chain management is an important role, and there are fantastic collaborations between Workday and other enterprise healthcare supply chain firms, such as GHX, to optimize processes.
During the question and answer session with Accenture, Kainos, and Deloitte, I inquired about revenue sharing with customers. With slim healthcare margins, chief information officers must take advantage of opportunities to co-create and commercialize the Extend solution. The initial response from partner accelerator companies is that they are not entertaining a profit-sharing model but will provide discounts for early adopters. My initial reaction is that it is not good enough, and this is an opportunity for entrepreneurial leaders and organizations to generate revenue.
The skills cloud is focused on interoperability. Workday offered the following example: An employee takes a data analytics course from an independent online learning provider, and Workday can bring in that skills data to improve the personalization of career experiences across Workday apps.
Similarly, skills data from Workday can be integrated into other applications to improve their function. For example, as an employee learns new skills and improves existing ones in Workday, that data can be used in external talent systems to predict machine learning results more accurately.
These are the top three announcements for healthcare decision-makers coming out of Workday Rising. The Healthcare industry is top of mind for Workday, and they have been gaining solid traction.
