VNDLY + Workday: 9 Months In

Sep 30, 2022

Author: Shashank Saxena

Shashank Saxena, General Manager of VNDLY, discusses the company’s recent merger with Workday, and where the future of VNDLY is headed.

Author: Shashank Saxena

Why this acquisition is different

We are excited to share the first article in our new executive series. This is an ongoing, bi-weekly series of articles that will highlight our product vision, strategy, and roadmap as our relationship with Workday develops.

It’s been just over nine months since VNDLY announced that we would be joining Workday, and the bright future ahead is becoming clearer everyday. As we look forward to that future, I wanted to discuss why this acquisition is different from others in the VMS space, how we plan to avoid the mistakes made in similar VMS acquisitions, and where our relationship with Workday is headed. To start, we wanted to discuss how we plan to drive critical areas, such as MSP partnerships, the transactional percent of spend pricing model, and third-party integration support.

By recognizing VNDLY’s expertise in the VMS industry, Workday has empowered our team to take the lead in many important areas of decision making.

Author: Shashank Saxena

Bringing together VNDLY’s VMS and Workday HCM

VNDLY’s history with Workday has always been one of collaboration and innovation. In August 2021, we became the first Vendor Management System (VMS) with a certified connector for Workday HCM. Our workforce connector delivers a clean, easy-to-use API integration which provides visibility across both the full-time and extended workforce. After the successful launch of VNDLY’s workforce connector for Workday, we proved that together we could provide better visibility into costs, workers, compliance, and more.

The exploration into this partnership provided our VNDLY executive team with the confidence that joining Workday would greatly benefit our company and customers. We have all seen acquisitions in which the acquiring company didn’t try to understand the VMS industry. But that clearly was not the case in our situation. Workday made that apparent to the VNDLY team by allowing VNDLY to retain its own transactional percent of spend payment models so that VNDLY could continue to hold indirect contracts through Managed Service Providers (MSPs).

By recognizing VNDLY’s expertise in the VMS industry, Workday has empowered our team to take the lead in many important areas of decision making. This trust has created a powerful partnership that has spurred our product’s growth in the months following the acquisition.

Advancing our mission to build the best VMS

Building a VMS that is user friendly and provides depth of functionality requires a large, world-class team of engineers, UX designers, product managers, and other talented professionals. With the backing of Workday, VNDLY has expanded—and continues to expand—our teams with top-tier talent. In turn, we have been able to leverage our newly augmented expertise to deliver product updates faster.

One example is vendor-initiated actions which will provide vendors the ability to take bulk actions on work orders. Another major feature is language capabilities. We originally planned to begin expanding the languages our product supports in Q1 of 2023, but, with the support of Workday, our goal is now to deliver 10+ global language capabilities in Q3 and Q4 of 2022.

Upcoming languages

German

Spanish

French (Continental)

French (Canadian)

Italian

Swedish

Finnish

Polish

Norwegian

Danish

Dutch

Portuguese

Building on industry relationships and standards

In addition to product innovation, VNDLY and Workday are both committed to building on important relationships and standards that exist in the VMS industry—principles which have helped our VMS achieve success from the very beginning. We are specifically continuing to strengthen our:

Managed service provider (MSP) partnerships: The VMS industry would not be where it is today without the early adoption by MSP partners. Both VNDLY and Workday see great value in working closely with MSPs for the benefit of mutual customers. We are building out a formal channel partner program to help maintain these relationships and help them prosper. There is no plan to stop working directly with MSPs.
Transaction percent of spend pricing model: In the past, VMS providers have eliminated this model of payment after an acquisition, despite customer preferences. Workday took VNDLY’s advice and adapted to this spend model, rather than eliminating it. VNDLY and Workday currently have no plans to remove it.
Third-party integrations support: VNDLY will maintain native API integrations with third-party providers such as Coupa, Okta, and Workday, as well as continue to support integrations with services like Oracle and ServiceNow, fully aligning with our customers’ existing ecosystems.

The major reason VNDLY is able to continue these industry standards and relationships is because Workday has offered us the freedom of remaining independent in our sales and marketing, product and engineering, implementation, and support teams. As such, we are able to own the VNDLY product and leverage industry expertise within our teams—all with the financial and organizational support of an industry leader.

As a result, extended workers now account for 36% of the entire U.S. workforce and researchers believe the number of extended workers will rise to 50% of the workforce by 2027.

Helping our customers anticipate change in the hiring landscape

The hiring landscape is evolving rapidly and, as such, hiring strategies need to change as well. According to Gartner, many companies are expanding their extended workforce to maintain the agility of their organization, hire the best talent, and remain competitive. As a result, extended workers now account for 36% of the entire U.S. workforce and researchers believe the number of extended workers will rise to 50% of the workforce by 2027.

A VMS is an essential tool for growing your extended workforce while keeping costs in check and timelines on track. As your organization navigates economic uncertainty, a fluctuating labor market, extended workforce growth, rising labor costs, and faces rapid digital transformation, you need a VMS that is built to anticipate and respond to today’s market trends, rather than a platform built more than a decade ago. By providing your team with a system that is easy-to-configure and self-service, your organization can adjust whenever it’s necessary without having to wait on customer support.

Powered by our recent merger, VNDLY is maintaining and building a product that efficiently supports the sourcing, hiring, payment, and offboarding of extended workers in today’s market. With Workday’s backing, we continue to be agile and adapt to our customer’s needs, even amid historic labor shortages and global events.