Human resources - Assignment Example

Summary of the news article Workday is into stock market launch or initial public offering (IPO) these days so as to acquire sufficient funds or financial resources for its expansion program. Workday is planning to expand by acquiring several small companies and this means it needs to acquire sufficient funds as well. Aneel Bushri, co-chief executive at Workday informed the public about this initial plan. Workday is renowned for its product and service offerings, the cloud-based software for human resources and financial programs, and now is trying to venture into enterprise computing.

At some point, the strategic move of Workday and its ambitious goals would initially include alignment and change within its internal business environment in order to achieve its corporate objectives. Managing human resources The article chosen for this paper suggests that in the event of creating corporate objectives, the idea about alignment and control most importantly if there is substantial change involved, should not be completely separated from an organization especially in the case of Workday.

The article just simply tries to show someone the importance of integrating the concept of managing human resources, most importantly in the event of expansion of the firm which specifically would include alignment and substantial change in the process. Managing human resources is such a complex activity in an organization. This is particularly difficult to handle especially within the case of Workday that it would want to acquire small companies for its expansion program. This would mean new management atmosphere for the acquired small companies and additional effort for control on the part of the management.

Managing human resources is at its crucial role in this case because the expansion program of Workday needs initial investment not only on technological or financial requirements, but including how to effectively manage the human resource. This is to ensure effective implementation of the firm’s corporate plans in the long run and also to guarantee the achievement of its corporate objectives. Managing human resources is such a complex activity because it requires the company to substantially involve not just the entire corporate goal, but including the capacity of the chosen personnel to perform their functions in order to obtain the set objectives.

Expansion plans of Workday need to be clearly organized with higher emphasis from the point of view of managing the human resources. Although, it has been its long-standing objectives to implement product offerings that would make sense in the market, Workday still needs to apply the basic or essential principles about managing the human resources. It seems the company is focused deeply on organizing the whole plan for expansion, and there was no highlight about human resource management in the first place.

Although the company seems to be adept about this because they substantially create programs for effective human resource management, they still need specific and customized program that would specifically fit to their own system requirements especially in the advent of their business expansion. Analysis The article emphasizes the strategic objectives of the company, but without further justification how they could obtain it through the remarkable potential of managing human resources. As mentioned, Workday is to go for initial public offering in order to outsource funds for its strategic expansion.

Its strategic move towards securing sufficient funds is not in question in this case. However, its expansion which primarily involves acquiring small firms is a substantial issue to be considered. It requires HR planning which primarily promotes alignment and change within an organization. Acquiring new firms would mean additional effort for Workday to align its strategies and even accept some remarkable corporate changes if necessary. Under the alignment of strategies, managing human resources is one of the most essential things to be done because the entire business of Workday involves people’s talents or skills.

Alignment of strategies does not only mean creating moves that would create competitive advantage, but its basic principle lies on the manpower. Eventually, Workday has been so concerned about its marketing strategies, and therefore there has no significant emphasis on HR planning especially on the issue of alignment and change. Thus, the best practice for HR planning cannot be entirely depicted. In my opinion, this is because Workday has assumed that its competitive strength lies on its technological advantage, and so there is less emphasis on its manpower.

However, it has to take into account that these two should go well together. I personally do not agree much on what is presented with the article because it primarily focuses on marketing strategies without taking into account the basic importance of managing human resources, particularly HR planning when in fact it talks about expansion plans for Workday. Reference Article: [Taken from: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/workdays-i-p-o-plan-of-domination-and-payback/?scp=1&sq=hr%20planning&st=cse] For Workday, an I.P.O.

and a Plan of Domination By QUENTIN HARDY | January 13, 2012, 10:44 am 1 Workday is planning to go public this year to raise cash and have stock to acquire several small companies that are crucial to its expansion plans, the company’s co-chief executive, Aneel Bhusri, said. Workday sells cloud-based software for human resources and financial programs and is seeking to follow the success of several recent initial public offerings in enterprise computing. It wants to challenge the likes of Oracle and SAP by offering a new series of business software products for service industries.

Workday’s long-term goal is to combine data analysis and social media, helping clients forecast and plan business operations and deploy teams using relatively cheap and accessible software. Mr. Bhusri, who founded the company with David Duffield, said the company more than doubled its bookings last year, from $150 million in 2010. The company’s I.P.O. is likely to be in the second half of this year. “I have a shopping list of five areas” of technology to extend Workday’s business, Mr.

Bhusri said, including analytics, for personnel and finance, and collaborative social media. With these, “we can be the E.R.P. of the services industry, the backbone to run their business,” he said, referring to enterprise resource planning software that manages information across a company. Another area he is considering is data file creation and management, which allows faster access to a greater array of data. Mr. Bhusri did not say what other areas he was interested in, or which companies he might buy.

He was clear about his aims, however. “Companies have H.R. and accounting data that they’d like to act on,” he said. Examples include which people have the best skills for a project and what kind of payments a company is getting from different geographies. While this is possible to do now using different software packages, Workday could create a more attractive product by putting it all in one place. It’s an ambitious goal. Enterprise resource planning software ties together multiple functions of the biggest companies, like product prototyping, supply chains, manufacturing and distribution.

Oracle and SAP are among the biggest providers of this software, which is typically used by the world’s largest manufacturers and involves scores of different software systems and hundreds of databases. It is also a somewhat personal mission. Mr. Bhusri was an employee, and eventually chief strategist, at Peoplesoft, a large software company founded by Mr. Duffield. Peoplesoft made software for human resources and financials, among other things, and was eventually taken over by Oracle after a nasty fight.

For both men, beating Oracle would be doubly sweet. With control of critical corporate processes, enterprise resource planning companies have to be highly reliable. As data storage moves from a company’s processors to the cloud, service quality is a worry for many buyers. One way to ease concerns is a public offering, which shows customers a company’s financial strength and creates a community of analysts who follow things like service issues, Mr. Bhusri said. Mr. Bhusri said Workday’s goal is not to upend those enterprise resource planning systems, but to create new ones for different kinds of companies. “E.R.P. was a product-centric creation, made 20 years ago in a very manufacturing-based economy,” he said.

“Now, 70 percent of the developed world’s economy is service-based.” Those kinds of companies, he said, will fare well using cloud-based systems like Salesforce (a Workday partner) for the parts of their operations dealing with customers, and Workday for their interior operations. “We have a shot to be the next SAP,” he said. And SAP itself? It can sell manufacturing enterprise resource planning services to China, he said. That is, unless someone figures out how to make a cloud-based enterprise resource planning system for manufacturing, or the big incumbents make their own software to run on the cloud.

In December, SAP said it would pay $3.4 billion for SuccessFactors, a cloud-based talent management company. The deal has not closed yet, but Lars Dalgaard, SuccessFactors’ chief executive, has been told by SAP’s leaders that he is supposed to take the company fully into the cloud-computing business. This post has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: January 19, 2012 The company more than doubled its bookings last year, from $150 million in 2010, not revenue.