In aviation, shattered windows aside, we have always admired planes which break the sound barrier. Over the last decade, the general assumption has been cloud/SaaS is a SME phenomenon. But that’s a barrier Workday has refused to accept since its inception.
An extract from my next book
“It was the meeting where our IT Council gave me the green light to proceed with a major global project to consolidate 80 different HR systems across the world. We had settled on our existing ERP vendor’s software” says David Smoley, CIO of Flextronics, one of the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturers.
“I thanked them for approving such a large project and then I surprised them. I told them I may come back to them in the next month with a “better, faster, cheaper” option”
“Mind you. this was after we had already spent months of evaluating options, systems integrators, building budgets and business cases. But we have a “fail faster” culture here at Flextronics so they more intrigued with what I may come back with than surprised.”
Smoley’s alternative for the massive global project – Workday. And this was 4 years ago when the “sound barrier” seemed even more daunting.
While that has meant fewer customers (just over 200), Workday has not swayed from the target larger, more complex customer. Other large customers include Time Warner, Thomson Reuters, Chiquita Brands among others.
And it is being rewarded – just announced another financing round valuing them at an estimated $ 2 billion.
That’s an impressive sonic boom, right there!
