Workday has captured the hearts of many enterprise buyers looking to modernize their employee experience with its human capital management (HCM) software in a way competitors have struggled to match. In recent years, Workday has sought to expand that foothold and compete more broadly to serve as a digital operations platform by expanding into financials and procurement. Forrester recently published The Forrester New Wave™: Workday Implementation Partners, Q3 2021 to help enterprises investing in Workday select the best-fit implementation partner. While customers automatically narrow down their potential systems-integrator shortlist when they select Workday due to its tightly managed partner ecosystem, selecting the right partner is critical to helping define your future operational business processes, successfully implement your solutions, and manage the change associated with Workday-based enterprise resource planning modernization.

Our evaluation helps buyers select from among Workday’s top partners based on expertise across the Workday portfolio, ability to deliver business results, and strategy to help enterprises maintain future fit strategies. Looking beyond the evaluation, we expect the following dynamics to continue to shape your Workday partner ecosystem:

  • More innovation and choices for buyers. While Workday is not likely to lower the standards for its partner ecosystem, as Workday seeks to expand into new geographies and gain adoption (particularly of newer apps), we expect that how Workday works with partners will evolve. As Workday shifts to adopt more co-innovation-based relationships with partners, customers will have increased choices and access to innovation through partner-built accelerators and best practices.
  • More specialization based on the product portfolio. As Workday gained traction in the HCM space, its top partners were leaders in HR transformation. Now, as Workday expands into more core apps, buyers will choose from partners that play across the tech stack and from those that specialize by function and module.
  • More transparency navigating the partner ecosystem. Workday changes how it categorizes its partners based on the type of project work that each is approved for. As Workday’s partner ecosystem expands, it will have to continue to make this segmentation easier for customers to navigate by helping them down-select the ones with the Workday partnership, geographic location, and specializations most relevant to them.

 

Use the Wave evaluation as a starting point to get up to speed with the market, but if you want to talk more about Workday partners, especially with recent changes in the market, please set up time with us here.