Oracle HCM vs. Workday HCM

By Shafaque Ansari Last updated Mar 17, 2023

Oracle and Workday have always dominated the human capital management (HCM) suite market. Notwithstanding the excitement surrounding Workday, Oracle has the biggest promise for the future of cloud-based HCM. If you’re considering a SaaS-based HCM solution, you should be aware of the fundamental differences between Oracle HCM Cloud and Workday HCM.

According to a PwC report, 75% of questioned organizations currently have at least one HR procedure in the cloud. 40% of respondents have core HR systems on the cloud, such as an HR management system, and another 26% intend to migrate a core system to the cloud over the next 1-3 years.

A Complete Solution

A comprehensive suite of cloud apps built on contemporary best practices may assist you in becoming a connected and intelligent corporation. With a full cloud solution, you can receive a consolidated perspective of your whole organization and focus your time and resources on what is most important to your company.

In comparison to Workday, Oracle provides a more comprehensive, fully integrated HCM Cloud solution. As part of its integrated SaaS package, Oracle has revamped all of its ERP, HCM, and EPM products for the cloud. The workday began with HCM and now includes certain cloud-based ERP components, such as finance and payroll software, but not manufacturing or supply chain apps.

Oracle HCM vs Workday HCM

Workday versus Oracle for human capital management (HCM) might be a challenging but worthwhile comparison. Both are prominent participants in the HCM software market, and they both provide three modules:

Human resource management
Talent management
Workforce management

Workday and Oracle HCM both provide capabilities for workforce analytics, compensation management, benefits administration, recruiting, and payroll within these modules. Their approaches to these tools, however, differ, thus the best software will depend on which method best corresponds with a company’s approach to HR management.

What Does Oracle HCM Provide?

Oracle Cloud HCM was created in response to the industry’s rising usage of cloud-based technologies. This implies that updates to Oracle HCM will be reactive rather than inventive in order to remain competitive in the market.

Nonetheless, Oracle HCM is a serious contender. It is a stable, dependable product that relies on the strong Oracle brand. The Oracle HCM interface is based on Oracle’s cloud database and links data sources throughout a whole corporation in areas such as accounting and finance.

It is easy to monitor the influence of HR on other departments of the firm with this type of data integration. Connecting HR data with accounting, for example, provides management with an overview of how much the workforce spends, allowing them to determine if they can afford to increase the team.

The employee interface contains corporate news, analytics for individuals and teams, and AI-driven learning and development action ideas. Getting individualized learning recommendations not only improves the user experience for employees but also helps to keep employees interested in their work.

Why might Oracle not be the best choice?

Businesses that prioritize employee involvement and feedback will be frustrated by Oracle Cloud HCM’s lack of employee engagement capabilities, such as Workday’s Peakon Employee Voice tool. To enhance active listening, employee engagement, and inclusion inside the business, Oracle HCM customers will need to integrate the software with external engagement platforms such as Assembly or Kudos.

Oracle’s solution also lacks capabilities to promote diversity, equality, and inclusion not only among present employees but also among potential hires. In contrast to Workday’s recruitment and hiring tools, Oracle lacks features that actively reduce bias and encourage diversity, equity, and inclusion.

What Does Workday HCM Provide?

Workday gives CHROs high-level visibility into how hiring, firing, retention, and individual employee performance all contribute to revenue development.

Visible workflows and drag-and-drop tools facilitate team rearrangements and big-picture upgrades. This keeps HR and corporate leadership organized and up to speed with the most recent information. When a firm undergoes a significant change in a short period of time, Workday’s visualization tool makes it simple to comprehend organizational and reporting structures.

Workday provides CHROs with detailed insight into how hiring, firing, retention, and individual employee performance all contribute to revenue growth.

Transparent processes and drag-and-drop tools make it easier to rearrange teams and make big-picture changes. This keeps HR and business leaders organized and up to date on current events. Workday’s visualization tool makes it easier to understand organizational and reporting structures when a company experiences a considerable amount of change in a short period of time.

The cloud infrastructure of Workday provides HR personnel with access to data and benchmarking. HR departments may examine their processes and discover opportunities for improvement using Workday analytics.

Workday is not intended just for HR usage, nor is it intended to be a top-down communication tool for HR professionals. It is, rather, a collaborative, cross-functional platform that enables and empowers employee self-service. All employees in the organization may view their performance, rewards, and even recommended learning through a single portal.

Why Workday might not be the best option?

While Workday fosters cross-departmental communication and data integration, it lacks a native social collaboration tool, such as instant messaging. Customers must combine Workday with their preferred social collaboration solution to close this gap. This is advantageous if a firm is already committed to a certain social program that it does not want to relinquish, such as Slack or Microsoft Teams. Nevertheless, integration difficulties between Workday and third-party applications may develop.

Workday, unlike Oracle, does not have its own ERP system or CRM, manufacturing, or supply chain management tools that interact with the HCM suite. This implies that Workday requires interfaces with third-party solutions to cover gaps, and a customer’s existing ERP and CRM systems may not be compatible with Workday.

Workday vs. Oracle: Workforce Analytics

Analytics and predictive modeling technologies assist businesses in analyzing strengths and possibilities in their human resource management operations. They also assist businesses in forecasting human resource demands in the face of a variety of potential extenuating conditions, such as an economic downturn or a hiring crisis.

Oracle

Oracle HCM features workforce modeling capabilities that use native data intelligence techniques to forecast recruiting and reorganization requirements depending on anticipated business conditions.

Based on previous hiring and employment statistics, the workforce projections tool visualizes data and produces insights. HR executives can forecast high performance and future opportunities, giving the HR team an advantage when it comes to hiring.

Oracle HCM handles workforce modeling with the long-term succession planning of businesses in mind. As a consequence, it’s ideal for organizations with established organizational structures and career paths since it allows them to foresee employee advancement into higher-level roles.

Workday

The adaptive workforce planning solutions from Workday connect HR, finance, and operations. This gives HR a 360-degree picture of workforce planning, allowing them to understand how a circumstance, such as an anticipated recruiting bottleneck in the company’s industry, would affect each department.

Workday workforce planning provides HR management with historical information on the complete cost of the workforce, including compensation, benefits, and travel reimbursement rules. HR management may use this data to create prediction models and determine how to effectively utilize the company’s human resources.

Companies may use historical data in Workday’s workforce planning tools to determine where to effectively spend resources—whether in recruitment pipelines or hiring campaigns—and how to shorten deadlines for hiring budget approval.

Our Pick Workforce Analytics

It’s a draw. This is why: The capacity of Workday and Oracle to satisfy a company’s workforce planning analytics is dependent on the company’s approach to HR management.

Workday HCM handles labor planning with an emphasis on financial and time considerations. As a result, Workday is superior for recruiting optimization.

In contrast, Oracle HCM handles human resource management with an emphasis on long-term employee growth at a firm. As a result, Oracle is a better choice for succession planning.

Workday vs. Oracle: Compensation Management

Compensation is a critical component in recruiting and maintaining employees. Compensation capabilities in an HCM system assist a firm in determining how competitively it pays its employees and whether it needs to increase employee remuneration through increases or bonuses.

Oracle

Oracle HCM addresses remuneration in a way that caters to both high-level management and HR experts but in distinct ways.

Oracle provides access to high-level remuneration indicators that are relevant to company executives. Such measures include basic salary, incentives, and extras to assist in making the best informed compensation-related decisions. Its budget modeling tool gives an overview of total employee pay and wage spending depending on various situations.

HR teams may build up customizable pay policies in Oracle HCM’s administrative interface that are aligned with a broader company strategy based on factors such as department and level. A range of automated features removes the uncertainty from compensation choices. The software system determines components of each employee’s wage depending on where they are located and informs HR managers of salary allocation discrepancies.

With these qualities, Oracle HCM’s compensation solutions are more rule-based. Oracle HCM is able to save HR professionals time by relying on rules and the automation that relies on them.

Oracle HCM offers an edge over Workday since it connects to employee performance data from the Oracle HCM suite’s performance management solution.

Workday

Workday’s compensation plan focuses on teamwork and transparency. Administrators and managers may work together to create the most appealing remuneration package by collaborating on a data-driven merits process and configuring criteria for awards and other staff incentives.
Providing for collaborative compensation-building takes into consideration diverse stakeholder viewpoints. Furthermore, as Workday’s pay equality dashboard demonstrates, establishing compensation guidelines from the start makes promotion processes more fair and equitable. At the same time, the collaborative approach risks adding to the workload of all parties involved in compensation schemes.

Our Pick Compensation Management System

Oracle. This is why: Both methods have comparable compensatory properties. Both strategies are worth considering, depending on a company’s approach to building up and implementing compensation packages. Yet, the integration of compensation and performance management in Oracle HCM enables faster approvals for rewards such as employee increases.

Workday vs. Oracle: Benefits

HCM software solutions should make it simple for employees to choose and assess benefits, as well as for HR professionals to monitor and analyze benefit utilization.

Oracle

In contrast, Oracle encourages employee self-service and benefits program flexibility. It offers a channel for individual workers to sign up for their own benefits while safeguarding employee privacy and allowing HR professionals to focus on higher-priority tasks. HR departments may use Oracle to deliver customized benefits plans as well as automatically generate and manage plan prices for each employee category.

Workday

Workday’s benefits administration capabilities emphasize structure and high-level data analytics. The HCM module’s benefits management solutions assist HR decision-makers in overseeing plan options, enrollment levels, and their impact on overall organization financials. Because all of this information is recorded in one place, HR departments may lessen their dependence on manual audits and lighten their tax filing burden.

Our Pick for Benefits Administration

Workday. This is why: These solutions provide identical benefit administration services, but their emphasis is different. The best solution will be determined by whatever aspects a corporation values most.

Workday distinguishes itself by integrating with over 300 benefits administration software products, whereas Oracle’s benefits administration only connects with Oracle Payroll. As a result, unless a firm already employs Oracle’s other solutions, integrating other software applications into Oracle Cloud HCM may be problematic.

Oracle vs. Workday: Recruiting

Workday and Oracle both highlight the financial relevance of workers as talent resources and revenue generators for their companies. Workday and Oracle both link to external financial databases because HR is connected to revenue.

This sophisticated contextual data enables executives to make more educated decisions about salary, recruiting, and perks. But, when it comes to recruitment aspects, their tactics, and strengths differ.

Oracle

Oracle’s recruitment solutions cover the whole personnel acquisition cycle, allowing businesses to fill positions swiftly and efficiently. It uses templates and data from previous positions to speed up the hiring process.

It also makes candidate suggestions by utilizing AI to match individuals with the desired competencies for a certain post. Recruiters may divide candidates into pools depending on their talents and use conversational chatbots or real-time texting to keep them all updated.

Oracle’s talent management technologies are more focused on automating and simplifying basic HR operations in order to empower employee self-service and relieve HR employees of administrative obligations.

Workday

Adaptability is emphasized in Workday’s recruitment tools. They use past data from performance management technologies to identify outstanding performers’ most valued talents and behaviors. Recruiters may utilize this data to iterate job descriptions and recruitment techniques in order to locate the best applicants for a changing workforce.

Its recruitment tools also assist firms in attracting a more diverse staff. It eliminates prejudice throughout the recruiting process by hiding identifying information on candidates and giving internal and external diversity data. This provides firms with an overview of where they stand in terms of a diverse workforce and goals to aim for.

Yet, recruiting new personnel is not always the best solution. Workday provides businesses with tools for identifying possibilities for existing workers to advance. Workday, for example, uses machine learning and analytics to assist businesses in better understanding the abilities that current workers currently possess in order to better identify skill gaps that guide hiring or training possibilities.

In this way, Workday’s personnel management strategy enables businesses to include each individual employee in a larger strategic picture and invest in their growth with the firm.

Our pick for Recruiting Functions

Workday. Here’s why: Oracle promotes efficiency for HR users above a positive candidate experience. Workday’s recruitment solutions, on the other hand, assist HR teams in adapting their recruiting approach over time while also promoting the company’s DE&I activities.

Oracle vs. Workday: Payroll

Payroll is a critical function that combines HR with accounting and finance, as well as affecting employee livelihood and happiness. As a result, having an HCM system that allows for precise, compliant payroll administration is critical.

Oracle

Oracle’s payroll system offers key features that are applicable to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and numerous Middle Eastern nations. India will join in 2023, followed by France in 2025.

Payroll administration and compensation technologies also interact with one another to reduce duplication of effort. Payroll managers may also be certain that payroll is handled in a proper way since the system automatically adjusts depending on changes in global, national, and local tax regulations.

Workday

Workday provides native payroll for the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France. It does, however, interact with other payroll software packages in order to manage payroll in different countries. Workday payroll dashboards may be seen by groups and individuals by HR users. This makes it simple to maintain role consistency and identify any anomalies that need to be resolved.

The direct links between Workday and recruitment tools immediately send employee data to payroll. As a result, there will be no payment delay for the new employee. Payments and adjustments to compensation are managed directly in Workday’s payroll tool, which syncs with data in the compensation tool. Workday’s real-time general ledger visibility alerts HR to potential pay issues before they occur, guaranteeing ongoing payroll compliance.

Our Pick for Payroll

Workday. This is why: While both provide equivalent payroll tools, Workday enables businesses to stay proactive and agile. Furthermore, HR may make adjustments to payroll at any moment, and the system will automatically recalculate.

Wrapping Up

Human capital management software is complicated, as are the purchasing and installation processes, regardless of which solution a firm chooses.

Because Oracle’s HCM range of solutions includes greater automation and self-service, the features of Oracle Cloud HCM are likely to be a better fit for firms with a big, scattered workforce. Automation and self-service save time for HR professionals, managers, and workers, but they also lead to more segmented, less collaborative workplaces. Smaller businesses may find it difficult to adjust to their continuously changing demands.

Workday’s product is aimed at smaller, more agile businesses that value flexibility, adaptation, and collaboration. The collaboration will become increasingly difficult to continue as a firm grows in size and its reporting systems become more complex. HR departments will hence require greater automation to simplify duties that were previously easier to complete with a smaller workforce.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]