Leader in enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, Workday has announced ongoing momentum in the retail industry as businesses undergo digital transformations to ensure they are better prepared for the future.

More than half of the retail organisations in the Fortune 500 have selected Workday with an increasing number of global retail organisations choosing Workday Financial Management in the past year to help drive deeper financial insight and organisational flexibility.

To help retailers elevate the worker experience and respond to changing customer demand, Workday introduced new demand forecasting to Workday Scheduling and Labour Optimisation. The new feature leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technology to enable retailers to forecast business demand based on external data such as sales and foot traffic history. Additional external data such as weather and local events will be added in the future.

With VNDLY, Workday provides organisations with a comprehensive solution that helps manage and source contingent and outsourced workers, helping ensure they have the right workers in the right place at the right time.

Leveraging intelligent data core from Workday, retailers can combine various data sources – merchandising, procurement inventory and invoices, point of sale (POS), supply chain systems, transportation, and more – with financial and people data to help their business leaders drive transformation through operational insights.

“We are experiencing similar momentum across large and medium-sized retail enterprises in Australia and New Zealand, as organisations increasingly understand the benefit of having a strong digital backbone in place to manage their people and finances,” Workday Australia and New Zealand vice president and managing director, Jo Anne Ruhl (pictured) said.

“Retail customers are modernising financial and HCM operations, replacing outdated legacy systems and undertaking digital transformations to ensure business agility, which is crucial to thriving in this changing world.”

Workday retail customers in Australia and New Zealand include Bunnings, MECCA, Aesop and Salvation Army.