Workday Taking on Oracle and SAP with Recruiting

According to an IDC report released last year, the worldwide Human Capital Management (HCM) market was pegged to be worth $7.5 billion in 2011. IDC estimates that HCM will grow annually at 8.1% over the next five years through 2016. The growth in the market is expected to be driven by the increasing adoption of cloud-based services.

Workday’s Financials
Workday’s (Nasdaq: WDAY) first quarter revenues grew 74% over the year to $159.7 million with an EPS of $0.13. The market was projecting revenues of $152.4 million with a loss of $0.15 per share. By segment, subscription revenues grew 80% over the year to $123.41 million. Professional services grew 56% over the year to $36.33 million.

Workday’s profits still remain distant as they continue to invest in product development and sales and marketing. During the last quarter, product development expenses grew 80% to $65 million and sales and marketing costs were up 78% to $68 million.

For the current quarter, Workday projected revenues of $173 million-$178 million, compared with the Street’s projections of $171.3 million. They projected current year with revenues of $730 million-$750 million, ahead of the market’s target of $735.4 million.

Workday’s Product Upgrade
Workday continued to enhance their product offerings for the market. During the recent quarter, they announced the availability of recruiting solution Workday Recruiting. Workday Recruiting is a comprehensive application that extends Workday’s core Human Capital Management to include recruitment services. Workday Recruiting is being hailed as a disruptive force in the SaaS-based recruitment solutions. It focuses on collaboration between hiring teams including hiring managers, recruiters, and interview team members. Workday claims that the biggest selling feature of the product is in its ability to help recruiting teams select from internal as well as external candidates. The application is customizable to meet an organization’s needs and includes features such as integration of social networks, mobile device compatibility, and a simplified job application process.

Workday is targeting the corporate recruiting software segment, which analysts peg as a market worth $1.5 billion. Bigger companies like Oracle and SAP have already made their big moves in the segment. Oracle has a defined HCM practice that was strengthened with the acquisition of Taleo and SAP added SuccessFactors to build their recruiting and HR offering. IDC researchers estimate the HCM market to be worth $9 billion in 2013 in which SAP and Oracle had a combined 39% market share. Comparatively, Workday is much smaller with a mere 1% market share. However, with impressive product upgrades, Workday will surely give these giants tough competition. Workday’s Recruiting offerings has already got strong reviews and has enlisted 70 organizations as its customers.

Meanwhile, they also upgraded their existing product with the release of Workday 22. The new suite includes an additional 347 new features for both HR and Financial management that will help enhance the way organizations manage talent, customer accounts, spend, and expenses by giving them more visibility into these areas.

Their stock is trading at $84.04 with a market capitalization of $15.46 billion. It touched a 52-week high of $116.47 in March this year.