Item 1. BUSINESS

Overview

Workday is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, helping customers adapt and thrive in a changing world. Workday provides more than 8,000 organizations with software-as-a-service solutions to help solve some of today’s most complex business challenges, including supporting and empowering their workforce, managing their finances and spend in an ever-changing environment, and planning for the unexpected.

Our purpose is to inspire a brighter work day for all. We strive to make the world of work and business better, and hope to empower customers to do the same through an innovative suite of solutions adopted by thousands of organizations around the world and across industries – from medium-sized businesses to more than 45 percent of the Fortune 500. Central to our purpose is a set of core values – with our employees as number one – followed by customer service, innovation, integrity, fun, and profitability. We believe that having happy employees leads to happy customers, and we are committed to helping our customers drive their digital transformations in this increasingly dynamic business environment.

As organizations adapt to changing conditions, we believe the need for an intuitive, scalable, and secure platform that ties finance, people, suppliers, and plans together in one version of truth is more important than ever. Workday provides organizations with a unified system that can help them plan, execute, analyze, and extend to other applications and environments, thereby helping them continuously adapt how they manage their businesses. To support this, Workday delivers weekly product updates in addition to major feature releases twice a year. Through this model, Workday customers are able to stay current as one Workday community all on the same version of software that features a unified data and security model and rich user experience. We sell our solutions worldwide primarily through direct sales. We also offer professional services, both directly and through our Workday Services Partners, to help customers deploy our solutions.

To grow our unified suite of Workday applications, we primarily invest in research and development, but we also selectively acquire companies that are consistent with our design principles, existing product set, corporate strategy, and company culture. We acquired Adaptive Insights, a business planning company, in fiscal 2019; Scout RFP (“Scout”), a strategic sourcing company, in fiscal 2020; and we recently announced our intent to acquire Peakon ApS (“Peakon”), an employee success platform that converts feedback into actionable insights, in fiscal 2022.

Our Capabilities

Workday’s suite of enterprise cloud applications addresses the evolving needs of the chief financial officer (“CFO”), chief human resources officer (“CHRO”), and chief information officer (“CIO”) across various industries. Workday applications for Financial Management, Spend Management, Human Capital Management (“HCM”), Planning, and Analytics and Benchmarking can also be extended to other applications and environments through the Workday Cloud Platform.

Financial Management: Solutions for the Office of the CFO

In the changing world of finance, Workday helps finance leaders accelerate their journeys towards becoming a truly digital finance operation by giving them the tools they need to manage the strategic direction of their companies while also supporting growth, profitability, and compliance and regulatory requirements. Workday’s suite of financial management applications helps enable CFOs to maintain accounting information in the general ledger; manage core financial processes such as payables and receivables; identify real-time financial, operational, and management insights; improve financial consolidation; reduce time-to-close; promote internal control and auditability; and achieve consistency across global finance operations.

Spend Management: Solutions for the Office of the CFO

As businesses adapt to changing conditions, Workday provides procurement professionals with tools to support them through the source-to-contract process, such as a user experience designed for ease and collaboration. Workday offers a set of cloud spend management solutions that help companies streamline supplier selection and contracts, manage indirect spend, and build and execute sourcing events, such as requests for proposals.

Human Capital Management: Solutions for the Office of the CHRO

In the changing world of human resources (“HR”), Workday helps companies identify and respond to rapidly changing conditions, whether they stem from shifting talent needs or a renewed focus on belonging and diversity. Workday’s suite of HCM applications allows organizations to manage the entire employee lifecycle – from recruitment to retirement – enabling HR teams to hire, onboard, pay, develop and reskill, and provide meaningful employee experiences that are personalized, helpful, and meet the diverse needs of today’s workforce.

Planning: Solutions for the Offices of the CFO and CHRO

In today’s dynamic business environment, businesses are continuously planning to model various scenarios and prepare to quickly respond to change. Workday provides an active planning process that can model across finance, workforce, sales, and operational data, helping companies make more informed decisions and respond quickly to changing situations. When combined with Workday’s financial management and HCM solutions, organizations are able to leverage real-time transactional data to dynamically adjust and recalibrate their plans.

Analytics and Benchmarking and Workday Cloud Platform: Solutions for the Offices of the CIO, CFO, and CHRO

In the changing world of work, Workday helps leaders make sense of the vast amount of data they collect enterprise-wide. For example, information technology (“IT”) leaders are navigating the complexities of supporting employees in new environments, which requires them to deploy an adaptable, secure architecture to help ensure global continuity and productivity while remaining agile. Workday provides applications for analytics and reporting, including augmented analytics to surface insights to the line of business in simple-to-understand stories, machine learning to drive efficiency and automation, and benchmarks to compare performance against other companies. In addition, Workday enables the development of extension applications and integration tooling that can accommodate our customers’ unique ways of doing business.

Industries: Solutions for the Offices of the CIO, CFO, and CHRO

Workday offers businesses flexible solutions to help them adapt to their industry-specific needs and respond to change. Workday’s applications serve industries such as healthcare, higher education, and professional services. For example, Workday provides supply chain and inventory solutions to healthcare organizations, allowing them to purchase, stock, track, and replenish their inventory to help support patient care. In addition, higher education institutions can deploy our solution to manage the end-to-end student and faculty lifecycle. Moreover, with our solution, professional services organizations can optimize and manage their client-facing projects.

Product Development

At Workday, innovation is a core value. Our culture encourages out-of-the-box thinking and creativity, which enables us to create applications designed to change the way people work. We invest a significant percentage of our resources in product development and are committed to rapidly building and/or acquiring new applications and solutions. Our product development organization is responsible for product design, development, testing, and certification. We focus our efforts on developing new applications and core technologies, as well as further enhancing the usability, functionality, reliability, security, performance, and flexibility of existing applications.

Human Capital

Workday was founded with the idea of putting people at the center of enterprise software, which is why employees are our number one core value. Our core values continue to serve as our guide as we navigate recent events, such as the global pandemic and the social justice movement.

As of January 31, 2021, our global workforce consisted of approximately 12,500 employees in 32 countries. We consider our relations with our employees to be very good. Our Chief People Officer, in partnership with our Chief Diversity Officer, is responsible for developing and executing Workday’s human capital strategy, including programs focused on total rewards; belonging and diversity; and employee development, engagement, and wellbeing. Our Chief People Officer and Co-CEOs regularly update our Board of Directors and Compensation Committee on human capital matters, and seek their input on subjects such as succession planning, executive compensation, and our company-wide equity programs.

Total Rewards

Our compensation philosophy is designed to establish and maintain a fair and flexible compensation program that attracts and rewards talented individuals who possess the skills necessary to support our near-term objectives, create long-term value for our stockholders, grow our business, and assist in the achievement of our strategic goals. We believe that providing employees with competitive pay, ownership in the company, and a wide range of benefits is fundamental to employees feeling valued, motivated, and recognized for their contributions. Equity ownership is a key element of our compensation program, allowing employees to share in Workday’s successes and aligning the interests of our employees with our stockholders. Additionally, our total rewards package includes market-competitive pay, an employee stock purchase plan, healthcare and retirement benefits, paid time off, and family leave. It also offers specialized benefits such as support for fertility options and new parents, as well as reimbursement of adoption costs. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we felt that it was important for employees to have a safe, convenient way to access healthcare and the time and resources necessary to address their individual and family healthcare needs. To that end, we introduced a global virtual healthcare network, expanded our sick leave policy, and offered additional support for caregivers.

Our Commitment to Pay Parity

We believe that all employees deserve to be paid fairly and equitably and be afforded an equal chance to succeed. We have a market-based pay structure that compares our roles to those of our peers in each region. This process helps ensure we pay according to the market value of the jobs we offer. We also have processes in place to make pay decisions based on internally consistent and fair criteria. Each year during our annual compensation cycle, we conduct a company-wide pay equity analysis to help ensure pay equity between men and women as well as a US-based analysis with respect to people of different races. If we identify differences in pay, we research those differences and, if appropriate, take action (including making adjustments to employees’ pay when appropriate).

Belonging and Diversity

We strive to be a workplace where all employees are valued for their unique perspectives and where we all collectively contribute to Workday’s success and innovation. Belonging and Diversity (“B&D”) plays an integral part in that as we aim to provide our employees with programs and resources that strengthen our culture and empower our communities. In support of our efforts, we have created our own unique approach to diversity called VIBETM, which stands for Value Inclusion, Belonging, and Equity.

To further support equity in our workplace and in our communities, we have established four guiding principles: hiring and developing diverse talent; cultivating a culture of belonging; strengthening our communities; and building inclusive products and technology. In addition, we have announced company commitments that map to these global guiding principles. To track progress and plan for the future, we use internally-developed products to bring diversity- and inclusion-related data into one centralized location and set our B&D strategy. Through these products, we can assess, measure, benchmark, and manage diversity and inclusion as well as empower our leaders to create B&D plans and measure performance and outcomes across areas such as hiring, development, and employee experience.

Learning and Development

Our employees tell us they are most engaged when they are continuously being exposed to new things, empowered to build new skills, and able to make an impact. We offer a number of educational resources, development opportunities, and a support community to guide employees throughout their Workday careers, which we refer to as journeys. These begin right from the moment employees start at Workday, with Learning at Workday, journeys designed to help new employees onboard and get acquainted with our culture, business, and technology. These are complimented by Career Building at Workday, journeys designed to deepen expertise, grow capabilities, and make meaningful connections, and Leading at Workday, journeys that help employees understand our leadership identity and prepare them to take on increasing leadership responsibilities. In the first half of fiscal 2022, we expect to launch the VIBE Way at Workday - journeys that explore why it is important to value inclusion, belonging, and equity and equip employees with the tools and resources to put VIBE into action.

Communication and Engagement

Our culture and how we treat people are paramount at Workday, and we believe that being transparent and facilitating information sharing are key to our success. Workday leverages multiple communication channels to engage and inform employees, including company meetings, town halls, internal websites, social collaboration tools, and targeted engagement surveys.

Buoyed by the opportunities offered by our own technology, our talent strategy, called Performance Enablement, puts employees at the center of their own career and performance journey. A fundamental tenet of this approach is the belief that we should provide employees with the tools and framework to enable their careers, putting them in the driver’s seat. Performance Enablement is centered on five factors that fuel employee success: enable contribution, grow capabilities, empower career, deepen connections, and align compensation and recognition.

Our talent and performance dashboard measures performance and includes a summary of an employee’s five factors, valuable data, and a better indication of where they stand in terms of performance. The dashboard also provides a snapshot view of performance-related tasks, with a visual summary of goals, connections, strengths, and growth opportunities.

Health, Safety, and Wellbeing

At Workday, we take a holistic approach to our employees’ wellbeing and have created wellbeing programs that focus on four core pillars: happiness, health, movement, and nutrition. These programs go beyond traditional medical benefits and wellness offerings and allow employees to focus on their chosen wellness goals as well as their mental health.

Specific to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have taken precautions to help support the health and safety of the Workday community, including our employees. As part of our support, we provided the majority of our employees with a one-time payment—equivalent to two-weeks’ pay—to help accommodate any unforeseen costs; announced that the majority of employees will not be required to return to their Workday office before August 2021; made an additional $1 million investment in the Workday Employee Relief Fund, through which employees around the world may be eligible for up to $5,000 USD for reasonable expenses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic; and provided a $500 per employee equipment stipend to enable employees to have a comfortable work-from-home environment. To help keep health and mental wellness top of mind during a particularly challenging year, we created a series of programs and communications focused on mental health. These included tools and resources related to sleep, healthy eating, and mindfulness, as well as enhancements to our Employee Assistance Program to, among other things, facilitate access to mental health services.

Our Global Workplace Safety team supports the traditional corporate areas of employee health and safety and physical security for Workday on a global scale. From the workplace to work-related travel, we strive to keep our employees safe with programs including safety awareness training, emergency response protocols, and our ergonomics and life safety team programs.

Giving and Doing

In support of our efforts to give back to the communities where we live and work, we believe that talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. Our employees donate time and expertise as mentors and volunteers to help close the skills gap. We also invest in leading workforce development organizations and provide direct training and employment opportunities for candidates facing barriers to employment through our Opportunity Onramps programs. On top of our strategic, company-led social impact and employee volunteerism efforts, we also believe that giving back is even more rewarding when people get to make an impact through their favorite causes. We encourage and support employee giving and volunteering through programs such as our charitable donation matching gift program and our team volunteer experience, where employee teams of five or more can volunteer with a charity partner of their choice and receive a $5,000 grant.

Customers

We have built a company culture centered around customer success and satisfaction. We primarily sell to medium-sized and large, global companies that span numerous industry categories, including technology, financial services, business and professional services, healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing, retail, and hospitality, as well as to educational institutions, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations.

As part of their subscription, customers are provided support services and tools to enhance their experience with Workday applications. This includes 24/7 support; training; a professional services ecosystem of trained Workday consulting teams and system integrators; a Customer Success Management group to assist customers in production; and Workday Community, an online portal where customers can collaborate and share knowledge and best practices.

We have supported our customers navigating the COVID-19 pandemic with the delivery of solutions and partnerships focused on assisting organizations through the changing world of work. For example, our Workday Return to Workplace offerings help enable organizations to plan return to workplace scenarios, support worker well-being, and understand critical health, vaccine, and safety risk information. We have also shifted all training, deployments, and support to be virtual. We also launched a COVID-19 customer information center on our Workday Community site, which provides access to resources about our business continuity plans, product configuration, reports for managing the impact of COVID-19, and regulatory developments.

Sales and Marketing

We sell our subscription contracts and related services globally, primarily through our direct sales organization, which consists of field sales and field sales support personnel. The Workday Field Sales team is aligned by geography, industry, and/or prospect size. We generate customer leads, accelerate sales opportunities, and build brand awareness through our marketing programs and strategic relationships. Our marketing programs target senior business leaders, including CFOs, CHROs, and CIOs.

As a core part of our sales and marketing strategy, we have developed a global ecosystem of partners to both broaden and complement our application offerings and to provide services that are outside of our area of focus. These relationships include software and technology partners, consulting and deployment service providers, business process outsourcing partners, and software partners of Workday Ventures, our strategic investment arm, who all help enable Workday to address the challenges our customers face while focusing on executing against our strategy.

Seasonality

We have experienced seasonality in terms of when we enter into customer agreements for our services. Historically, we have signed a significantly higher percentage of agreements with new customers, as well as renewal agreements with existing customers, in the fourth quarter of each fiscal year due to large enterprise account buying patterns. As a result, our billings and subscription revenue backlog have been highest in the fourth quarter. Although these seasonal factors are common in the technology industry, historical patterns should not be considered a reliable indicator of our future sales activity or performance.

Competition

The overall market for enterprise application software is rapidly evolving, highly competitive, and subject to changing technology, shifting customer needs, and frequent introductions of new products. We currently compete with large, well-established, enterprise application software vendors, such as Oracle Corporation (“Oracle”) and SAP SE (“SAP”). We also face competition from other enterprise software vendors, from regional competitors that only operate in certain geographic markets, and from vendors of specific applications that address only one or a portion of our applications, some of which offer cloud-based solutions. These vendors include UKG Inc. (formerly The Ultimate Software Group, Inc.); Automatic Data Processing, Inc.; Infor, Inc.; Ceridian HCM Holding Inc.; Microsoft Corporation; Anaplan, Inc.; Coupa Software Inc.; and Unit4.

In addition, other cloud companies that provide services in different markets may develop applications or acquire companies that operate in our target markets, and some potential customers may elect to develop their own internal applications. However, the domain and industry expertise that is required for a successful solution in the areas of financial management, HCM, and analytics may inhibit new entrants that are unable to invest the necessary capital to accurately address global requirements and regulations. We expect continued consolidation in our industry that could lead to significantly increased competition.

We believe the principal competitive factors in our markets include:

• level of customer satisfaction and quality of customer references;

• speed to deploy and ease of use;

• breadth and depth of application functionality;

• total cost of ownership;

• brand awareness and reputation;

• adaptive technology platform;

• capability for configuration, integration, security, scalability, and reliability of applications;

• operational excellence to ensure system availability, scalability, and performance;

• ability to innovate and rapidly respond to customer needs;

• domain and industry expertise in applicable laws and regulations;

• size of customer base and level of user adoption;

• customer confidence in financial stability and future viability; and

• ability to integrate with legacy enterprise infrastructure and third-party applications.

We believe that we compete favorably based on these factors. Our ability to remain competitive will largely depend on our ongoing performance in product development and customer support.

For more information regarding the competitive risks we face, see “Risk Factors” included in Part I, Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Intellectual Property

We rely on a combination of trade secrets, patents, copyrights, and trademarks, as well as contractual protections, to establish and protect our intellectual property rights. We require our employees, contractors, consultants, suppliers, and other third parties to enter into confidentiality and proprietary rights agreements, and we control access to software, documentation, and other proprietary information. Although we rely on intellectual property rights, including trade secrets, patents, copyrights, and trademarks, as well as contractual protections and controls to establish and protect our proprietary rights, we believe that factors such as the technological and creative skills of our personnel; creation of new products, features and functionality; and frequent enhancements to our applications are more essential to establishing and maintaining our technology leadership position.

Governmental Regulation

As a public company with global operations, we are subject to various federal, state, local, and foreign laws and regulations. These laws and regulations, which may differ among jurisdictions, include, among others, those related to financial and other disclosures, accounting standards, privacy and data protection, intellectual property, corporate governance, tax, government contracting, trade, antitrust, employment, immigration and travel, import/export, and anti-corruption. There is no assurance that existing or future laws and regulations applicable to our operations, products, and services will not have a material adverse effect on our business. Presently, costs and accruals incurred to comply with these governmental regulations are not material to our capital expenditures, results of operations, and competitive position.

Privacy and Data Protection Laws

Our customers can use our applications to collect, use, and store personally identifiable information (“PII”) regarding a variety of individuals in connection with their operations, including but not limited to their employees, contractors, students, job applicants, customers, and suppliers. National, state, and local governments and agencies in the countries in which we or our customers operate have adopted, are considering adopting, or may adopt laws and regulations regarding the collection, use, storage, transfer, processing, protection, and disclosure of PII obtained from individuals. Additionally, we have been requested to, and may continue to need to, develop features, enhancements, or modifications to our products to help our customers comply with the privacy and data protection laws in their jurisdictions. Privacy and data protection laws are particularly stringent, and the costs of compliance with and other burdens imposed by such laws, regulations, and standards, or any alleged or actual violation, may limit the use and adoption of our services, reduce overall demand for our services, lead to significant fines, penalties, or liabilities for noncompliance, slow the pace at which we close sales transactions, require us to divert development and other resources, or result in reputational harm or other adverse impacts to our business. Moreover, if we or our sub-processors fail to report a data breach or other loss of data within timeframes mandated by law, we may be liable for certain fines, penalties, and other liabilities, and it may damage our reputation and brand.

For a further discussion of the risks associated with government regulations that may materially impact us, see “Risk Factors” included in Part I, Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Corporate Information

We were incorporated in March 2005 in Nevada, and in June 2012 we reincorporated in Delaware. Our principal executive offices are located at 6110 Stoneridge Mall Road, Pleasanton, California 94588, and our telephone number is (877) WORKDAY. Our website address is www.workday.com. The information on, or that can be accessed through, our website is not part of this report. Workday, the Workday logo, VIBE, WayTo, Adaptive Planning, Adaptive Insights, Scout, and Opportunity Onramps are trademarks of Workday, Inc., which may be registered in the United States and elsewhere. Other trademarks, service marks, or trade names appearing in this report are the property of their respective owners.

Available Information

Our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), and all amendments to these filings, can be obtained free of charge from our website at www.workday.com/sec-filings. The SEC maintains an Internet site that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC at www.sec.gov. Workday also uses its blogs.workday.com website as a means of disclosing material non-public information and for complying with its disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. Information contained on or accessible through any website reference herein is not part of, or incorporated by reference in, this Annual Report on Form 10-K, and the inclusion of such website addresses in this Annual Report on Form 10-K is as inactive textual references only.