I saw Panera Bread present eye-popping stats at Workday Rising - 65,000 hires a year with rapid growth and 90% staff turnover and yet, on-boarding expectations of less then 24 hours. It would not be an exaggeration to say Panera, along with Starbucks, Whole Foods and a few others have significantly influenced American diet in the last couple of decades. Even in a world wary of gluten, Panera has thrived and continues to evolve its menu with artisanal breads, vegetable proteins, broth bowls and more. The technology aspects of the business have evolved just as rapidly – you can order on-line, on iPads in the cafes, soon have meals delivered with associated dispatch, routing and other technology The vast majority of business process events are initiated by employee self-service. I could not help think the concept of the café has evolved rapidly.
In fact, throughout Rising I kept thinking of Darwin. Workday announced benchmarking . Benchmarking? Have we not done that for eons? This is a new form of benchmarking not feasible in on-prem world. This which leverages growing masses of data in the cloud. It factors a contemporary set of security, privacy and legal considerations
CEO Aneel Bhusri told analysts we are moving to a new generation of applications which leverage video and collaboration, and next-gen spreadsheets.
And you could see that in the Learning application highlighted at the event, which reflects the YouTube and MOOC impact on how we learn and relearn. Workday announced “With unlimited storage, a smart video player that supports standards like HTTP live streaming (HLS), and a cloud infrastructure that encodes, stores, and streams video via a top-tier global content delivery network, Workday Learning ensures the highest quality video experience. “
Or Planning, another application highlighted at the event. There you could see the impact of Gridcraft (that Workday acquired last year) – a collaborative spreadsheet tool that can be embedded in enterprise systems.
Wait – learning and planning? How ancient are those? Exactly. And Workday had a series of humorous videos making fun of traditional applications in those categories.
As Darwin would say, the cloud is leading to next set of evolution. And allowing technology to keep up with even more rapid evolution in cafes.
