ChallengeWorkday is a game-changer. They had outgrown their market category – and positioning story. In seven short years, Workday created and dominated a new market category – Cloud-based HR management systems – and forced the hand of Oracle and SAP to acquire its competitors (Taleo, SuccessFactors). Workday’s vision from the start was to compete directly with those ERP behemoths with Cloud-based financial and HR management systems. In 2012, Workday had sold financial management solutions to marquee customers such as Sallie Mae and AAA, but the market wasn’t recognizing Workday as a financial systems player. With plans to IPO later in the year, Workday needed a new positioning story – and FAST. How could they establish themselves as a key player to CFOs and in the financial management systems market? What unifying, single story could sales and marketing tell to explain the overarching value of Workday’s HR AND finance solutions?
SolutionWorkday turned to the firm that developed their original positioning, before Workday signed its first customer. Choosing Firebrick again was a no-brainer: Workday executives and sales reps still used messages and visuals from the 2005 positioning to tell their story in 2012. Now, Firebrick created a positioning that elevated Workday from a niche HR player to a business management solution in direct competition with Oracle and SAP and cloud 1.0 upstarts like NetSuite. For the first time, Workday could articulate the business benefits of its native-built architecture, which are far greater than well-understood cost savings of moving to the cloud. The positioning established Workday as a “major disruptive force in enterprise software,” giving them new stature and dramatically increasing sales of their financial management solutions.Workday turned to the firm that developed their original positioning, before Workday signed its first customer. Choosing Firebrick again was a no-brainer: Workday executives and sales reps still used messages and visuals from the 2005 positioning to tell their story in 2012. Now, Firebrick created a positioning that elevated Workday from a niche HR player to a business management solution in direct competition with Oracle and SAP and cloud 1.0 upstarts like NetSuite. For the first time, Workday could articulate the business benefits of its native-built architecture, which are far greater than well-understood cost savings of moving to the cloud. The positioning established Workday as a “major disruptive force in enterprise software,” giving them new stature and dramatically increasing sales of their financial management solutions.
Result