A Guide to Workday Integration with Analytics

Data has become critical for candidate shortlisting, employee management, and planning several tasks related to workforce management. Tracking attrition trends, performance monitoring, and maintaining workforce diversity are some other tasks where data plays an important role. Workday, a popular enterprise HR system, can be easily integrated with data-based tools for data-driven hiring. However, Workday has a highly complex configuration, which makes it quite difficult to use. 

Moreover, Workday’s security mechanism includes a role-based access control mechanism that presents some challenges. The absence of clarity of roles across organizations results in overly broad data access permissions. Using Workday in such a situation can lead to security issues.

To resolve these problems, it is better to integrate Workday with a modern analytics platform. By doing so, you can consolidate data, generate critical insights, and create informative dashboards for better workforce management.

Through this article, you will understand why integrating Workday with a modern analytics platform is beneficial. It also enlists some integration tools that you can use to consolidate data from Workday.

Tapping into Underused Data Inside Workday

Workday is a cloud-hosted software armed with human capital management (HCM), financial management, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) services. It is SaaS software that you can use in your business primarily for talent acquisition, employee learning, and payroll performance management. Some of the prominent products provided by Workday include:

• Workday Adaptive Planning: Workday Adaptive Planning is an enterprise performance management (EPM) software. Using this, you can manage several tasks, including financial, workforce, and operational planning.
• Workday Employee Experience: This service consists of a set of features offered by Workday that help improve employees’ overall working experience. The functionalities within Workday Employee Experience are based on machine learning and provide relevant insights and assistance to all employees.
• Workday Peakon Employee Voice: It is an AI-powered software that helps you analyze data related to employees’ sentiments. The insights obtained help in comparing performances and handling burnout issues among employees to improve their productivity.
• Workday Payroll: It is payroll processing software that is synced with HCM software to ensure that your employees receive their pay promptly. It allows employees to view their payslips along with access to an analytical breakdown of their compensation in the form of dashboards.

Additionally, you can also leverage Workday for legal tasks such as contract lifecycle management and industry operations, including supply chain management. The platform also enables you to blend AI by developing AI agents for your desired organizational tasks.

Also Read: How AI is Redefining Recruitment for Companies?

Why Integrate Workday with Analytics Platforms?

To use data effectively, you can integrate Workday with modern analytics platforms. These are cloud-based software that help you in data querying and visualizing in near real-time. 

Integrating Workday with analytics systems allows you and your HR team to consolidate raw data at a unified destination system. After analyzing and visualizing this data, the HR department can make well-informed decisions to hire and manage employees within the organization.

Let’s look at some of the ways integrating Workday with analytics platforms can be beneficial:

1. Automation

Automation is one of the major benefits of Workday integration and analysis. You can extract data using APIs or schedule periodic or real-time data syncs from Workday to the analytics platform of your choice. To achieve this, you can use no/low-code data integration tools such as Fivetran, Workato, or Boomi that offer pre-built connectors for data migration. 

Such automation reduces the need to manually download numerous reports or gather data from spreadsheets and CSV files to keep the record updated.

2. 360 Degree Overview

By analyzing Workday data, you can get a comprehensive view of recruitment and HCM. For instance, the post-analysis visualization dashboards provide useful information, including open roles in various teams, attrition trends, and hiring velocity.

You can also monitor the implementation of diversity and inclusion policies within your organization. If there are loopholes, like underrepresentation, you can quickly take action to resolve them and ensure smooth operations.

3. Data-driven Hiring

By integrating Workday with an analytics tool, you can trace the source, such as referrals, job boards, or social media, through which a candidate has applied. You can also study offer acceptance rates, salaries, and performance reviews. 

This information helps in understanding which hiring channels are preferred by candidates, which employees will be retained for a long time, and who can be promoted.

4. Reduces Hiring Costs

Integrating data from Workday with an analytics platform gives you in-depth information on hiring budget. This enables tracking of job board fees, recruiter commission, and time-to-fill expenses. Such insights aid in identifying extra expenses, based on which you can optimize the budget to ensure better ROI, streamlining recruitment expenses.

Data Extraction and Integration Tools

There are several data integration tools that you can use to integrate Workday with analytics platforms. Some of these are as follows:

Workato

Workato is an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) solution that enables you to consolidate data from multiple sources to streamline your workflows. It offers a large library of pre-built connectors to move data between various data systems, including Salesforce, Workday, Jira, and NetSuite.

If the connector that you want to use is not already available, Workato allows you to build one on your own using its simple SDK. The data extracted from Workday can be easily converted into a suitable form according to the destination analytics platform. For this, you can utilize Workato’s data mapping and transformation feature. It also supports real-time data synchronization so that changes made in source data are reflected immediately in the destination system.

To ensure secure data integration, the platform offers role-based access control features and also complies with global data regulatory frameworks, including HIPAA and GDPR.

Boomi

Boomi is a well-known data integration platform that offers 600+ pre-built connectors to integrate data between numerous source and destination data systems. Using this platform, you can easily integrate Workday with any on-premise or cloud-based data system of your choice. This facilitates the creation of a unified employee and hiring-related dataset for further analysis.

To facilitate data consistency, Boomi ensures that any changes made to source data are also reflected in destination data through its change data capture(CDC) feature. In addition, the platform helps in orchestrating data integration pipelines and automates data workflows.

Fivetran

Fivetran is a prominent data movement platform that facilitates the efficient integration of Workday with a modern analytics platform. If the destination where you want to transfer the extracted data does not already exist, Fivetran allows you to leverage the SDK to create the desired connector. You can deploy the platform on-premise or in the cloud according to your infrastructural requirements.

To effectively transform the extracted data, you can integrate Fivetran with the dbt tool. After transformation, you can load this data to your desired destination for further analysis and reporting. Other than this, you can conduct near real-time data replication using Fivetran, as it allows you to set up replication frequencies between real-time and once every 24 hours.

CData

CData is a popular low-code/no-code data integration service that provides a large library of pre-built connectors to integrate Workday data with diverse destinations. This includes various BI software, analytics tools, databases, and data warehouses. CData also allows you to access data from Workday Report-as-a-Service, which is not available while using Prism Analytics.

Due to such features, you can use CData efficiently to create a unified repository of Workday data for better analytics and governance.

Workday Prism Analytics

You can choose Workday Prism Analytics if you want to continue working only within the Workday ecosystem. It helps you integrate data from external CRM or ERP data systems into Workday through APIs or SFTP.

After cleaning and transforming the integrated data, you can perform advanced analysis using Workday’s powerful analytics engine. It facilitates the generation of complex metrics that can be directly reflected in dashboards and reports.

Data Processing and Storage Platforms

Now, let’s look at some well-known analytics platforms with which you can integrate your Workday data:

Snowflake

Snowflake is a cloud-based data warehouse that allows you to store and query large volumes of data effectively. It is used widely to integrate and analyze Workday data. You can utilize the OpenFlow connector supported by Snowflake to extract data from Workday and store it in any database of your choice. To retrieve this data for analysis and dashboarding, you can use SQL queries.

Google BigQuery

Google BigQuery is a cloud-based data warehouse that allows you to query data at a petabyte scale. By integrating Workday with BigQuery, you can perform real-time analytics and gain instant insights regarding your recruitment operations. This is due to the columnar storage format that enables you to execute high-speed queries on large volumes of datasets easily. You can then create dashboards and reports of the analytical results obtained using visualization tools like Power BI.

Data Visualization Tools

Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is a visualization software that offers user-friendly features to generate visual reports and dashboards. You can use any of the several available data integration tools to consolidate data from Workday into Power BI. During this process, you can extract data from any source, such as CSV or Excel files or a SQL database, transform it, and then load it into Power BI. The software then facilitates the creation of interactive graphs and dashboards to make better hiring decisions.

Tableau

Tableau is a popular data visualization tool with an intuitive interface that helps you analyze and visualize Workday data. You can opt for Tableau Desktop, Tableau Prep, and Tableau Cloud editions depending on project requirements. This visualization tool allows you to perform customized data modeling and create advanced visuals. Such features aid in gaining accurate data insights for accurate workforce monitoring and recruitment.

Final Thoughts

Integrating Workday with modern analytics platforms is critical for effectively leveraging HCM data for strategic hiring practices. This article gives you a detailed overview of why it is important to consolidate Workday data with prominent analytics platforms. It also briefly explains a few efficient data integration platforms, challenges of integration, and best practices to overcome them. Using these practices, you can analyze Workday data to get an edge over your competitors in attracting high-performing human capital.

Frequently Asked Questions

Naveen Kolli is a seasoned technology leader with over 18 years of experience at the intersection of engineering, innovation, and business transformation. He specializes in AI/ML, enterprise systems, cloud platforms, and digital transformation strategies, with a strong track record of driving impactful solutions across multiple industries.
He has contributed to the technology community through mentorship, academic collaborations, and volunteer engagements with professional societies such as the IEEE, where he actively participates in judging, reviewing, and supporting innovation-driven events like international hackathons. His leadership and collaborative skills have been acknowledged in various global initiatives, including his nominations for senior-level memberships and fellowships in prestigious organizations.
Naveen is passionate about bridging the gap between academia and industry, supporting initiatives that promote AI-driven talent development, employment resilience, and ethical technology adoption. His current focus includes building frameworks for industry engagement within professional societies and enabling scalable community-based tech initiatives.