You are not so different from your customers.
Their search for products or services that are the right fit leads them to you in the same way your quest for a fitting enterprise resource planning system prompts you to compare Workday vs. NetSuite ERP solutions.
While Workday and NetSuite are potential game-changers for your business, they will live up to their potential only when deployed in the spaces they were designed for.
As you wouldn’t thrust an outstanding basketballer into a soccer game and automatically expect a glowing performance, don’t reach for either of these ERPs without doing your due diligence.
In this case, due diligence is discovering how Workday and NetSuite compare and which is a better fit for your business.
We can help you with the first part, but the second is an inference you’ll draw on your own. Ready to get the information you need to draw that inference? Read on.
Workday vs. NetSuite: The Complete Comparison
Workday provides cloud-based financial management, human capital management, and data analytics applications for medium-sized and large corporations in a single system.
Its functionalities include Workday Adaptive Planning, Spend Management, Talent Management, Payroll, Workforce Management, Professional Services Automation, etc.
While Workday is a more niche product, NetSuite is a cloud-based suite of integrated applications that help you manage all business operations.
From supply chain management to inventory monitoring, finance and accounting to HR management, Customer Relationships Management to omnichannel e-commerce, NetSuite is your go-to solution.
Let’s get into a more detailed comparison of NetSuite and Workday.
Pricing
As is common practice with enterprise software providers, Workday doesn’t provide fixed pricing rates on its website. Instead, it requires companies to contact the sales team for custom quotes.
Not many third-party websites offer in-depth Workday pricing details. Outsail is one of the few that does. The website claims Workday charges an annual subscription fee of around $300k and a one-time implementation fee, usually 150%-200% of the subscription fee.
You’ll also not find definite pricing details on NetSuite on its website, but there’s information on how NetSuite calculates each company’s unique quotation.
The four metrics used are the monthly licensing fee for the platform, the company’s preferred modules, the number of users, and a deployment fee.
Further research on third-party websites yielded information on the cost of some of the pricing metrics.
Reports suggest that the monthly fee is around $999, modules can cost anything between $149 to $499 each, and the cost of adding new users is $99 per user.
The reviewed sites didn’t give information on the implementation fee but noted that further updates and maintenance are free.
Verdict: NetSuite takes the pricing trophy. Unlike Workday, which is typically regarded as one of the most expensive options on the market, NetSuite offers extensive capabilities at affordable prices.
That said, using pricing as a selection metric can be tricky because, depending on your situation, the pricier option may be the better one for you.
Features
Seeing as Workday is a niche solution focused mainly on financial management and human capital management solutions, there’s not much basis for comparison between it and NetSuite.
Let’s take a quick look at how some of the key features they have in common compare.
Financial Management
Workday’s financial management module is a one-stop shop for accessing integrated data on all finance-related enterprise matters and maintaining tight control over financial and accounting processes.
With machine learning, it intelligently guides the automation of financial activities, points out anomalies in records, and makes recommendations. That way, the team can detect errors faster and get insights promptly.
Using these structures and more, Workday executes regular financial management operations, including:
- Financial accounting: general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, fixed assets management, cash management, financial reporting.
- Consolidation and close: global consolidation, account reconciliation, period close process, and dashboard for period-based reports.
- Revenue management: contract-cash processing, ASC 606/IFRS 15 compliance, reports on profitability, project costing, what-if scenarios, and more.
- Expense management: global receipt scanning and automatic expense item creation, insights and analytics, expense tracker and control, quick reimbursements, etc.
- Grants management: automated grants management for regulatory and sponsor compliance, expenditure tracking, etc.
- Financial planning: budgeting and forecasting, scenario planning, etc.
- Analytics: reports from blended data sources, automated benchmarking, automated internal and external reports.
NetSuite’s financial management module performs similar functions to Workday’s solutions. The cloud-based package delivers real-time insights into a company’s financials and speeds up daily financial transactions, consolidation, and budgeting cycles.
Plus, it integrates with other business applications to provide synced insights across the board. Its key capabilities include:
- Accounting: general ledger, accounts receivable and payable, fixed assets management, tax management, cash management, etc.
- Billing: recurring subscription management, automated rate creation, multiple pricing models, etc.
- Budgeting: scenario planning and modeling, revenue planning, workforce planning, operational expense, reporting, etc.
- Revenue recognition: ASC 606 and IFR5 15 compliance, automated revenue allocation, multiple revenue recognition methods, revenue plan management, etc.
- Consolidation: multi-book and multi-entity reporting, automated consolidation, and more.
- Reporting: US GAAP and IFRS-compliant prebuilt and custom reports, multidimensional analysis, multi-book reporting, etc.
Verdict: NetSuite nicks this round with its slightly broader financial functionalities for subsidiaries. But both options are top players in financial management, as exemplified by their rating as “leaders” in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud Core Financial Management Suites for Midsize, Large and Global Enterprises (2021).
Human Resource Management (HCM)
With human resource management being one of the two key areas Workday focuses on, its HCM module is understandably robust.
From ensuring you can view data about your global workforce to delivering hiring and payroll management functionalities, Workday gives you control over employee management, end to end.
Here’s an overview of what to expect:
- Human capital management: global workforce management, employee and skills directory, compensation management, etc.
- Payroll and Workforce Management: payroll processing, audits, reporting, time and attendance tracking, automated leave approval and reminder, etc.
- Talent Management: Talent acquisition, learning recommendations for employees, and more.
- Employee experience: onboarding connects employees to third-party applications the company uses, personalized recommendations powered by machine learning, and more.
- Knowledge management provides answers to employee HR questions fast and in different workspaces.
- Workforce Planning: Workforce modeling, forecasting, and budgeting
NetSuite also integrates several workforce and human resource management tools in one place.
The HCM module removes the need for third-party integrations, creates a better experience for employees, and ensures you can make informed workforce-related decisions using accurate data. Its key submodules include:
- HR admin: employee directory, HR operation automation, database access control, etc.
- Payroll: payments processing and scheduling, integration with general ledger, tax, benefits deduction, etc.
- Performance management: goals and KPIs setting, progress monitoring, and commendation.
- Workforce management: time-off management, benefits, compensation tracking, and workforce planning.
- Employee engagement: self-service feature for employees for simple tasks like updating personal info, onboarding and offboarding, etc.
- Analytics: employee headcount, expense, revenue and profit per active worker, etc.
Verdict: This round ends in a stalemate.
Project Management/Professional Services Automation (PSA)
Workday has a PSA module that helps you run your professional services business more efficiently and profitably.
Workday’s PSA software powers timely and cost-effective project completion by integrating HR, finance, and planning tools. Its key capabilities include:
- Project and resource management
- Insight on project financials
- Expense tracking and management
- Time tracking
- Project accounting and billing
NetSuite’s PSA module is just as effective. The integrated cloud solution oversees project and resource management, project billing and accounting, time tracking, contractor tracking, and more. It also features a detailed reporting tool that delivers real-time data on project performance.
Verdict: This is a close call, but NetSuite just edges Workday in this category. Its PSA functionalities are more extensive and include NetSuite OpenAir, which among other things, helps businesses find potential clients.
User Experience
In terms of user experience, the word on the street is that NetSuite is user-friendly as long as the user goes through training first.
This suggests that new users may find navigating the platform a tad difficult. And speaking of navigation, some users also suggest that NetSuite’s user interface appears dated.
That said, they say it gets the job done pretty well.
NetSuite also offers iPhone and Android mobile apps for the on-the-go monitoring of critical operations and performing necessary business actions such as expense reporting.
Workday boasts a modern user interface. Like NetSuite, it also provides mobile apps, and its design is mobile-friendly.
Although customers consider Workday to be pretty user-friendly, they report that some aspects like the goal-setting and reporting features are sometimes slow and unresponsive. Plus, some users believe there aren’t adequate search filters.
Verdict: NetSuite wins this round as most of its UX issues are peculiar to newbie users and can be avoided with proper training. Workday, on the other hand, has more systemic glitches.
Integrations
Workday provides impressive extensibility and integration features.
The former gives you access to Workday Extend, which allows you to develop new apps for your business needs using Workday protocols.
Workday Integration Cloud lets you connect Workday with several third-party apps using pre-built integrations or the industry-standard API framework.
NetSuite has its integration platform called SuiteCloud Integration which performs almost the same function as Workday’s Integration Cloud.
It supports industry-standard integration protocols such as ODBC/JDBC, REST, SOAP WEB services, custom REST endpoints, and CSV file import so that you can connect NetSuite to almost any third-party app or system for seamless data exchange.
Verdict: Both solutions are pretty evenly matched in this category.
Customer Support
NetSuite’s customer support channels span email, phone support, chat, knowledge repository, and a forum. What’s more, the staff-provided support is available 24/7.
That said, apart from the essential support available to all customers, you can subscribe to premium or advanced packages that come with varying service options.
Workday also offers a wide array of support channels available 24/7.
You get a designated customer success manager for the preliminary stages of adoption; then, there’s email support, online resources, and a community of other customers called Workday Community.
Verdict: NetSuite wins this round because, according to users, connecting with its customer service reps is more straightforward.
Reviews
Unsurprisingly, when we visited user review aggregating sites, we discovered that customers were mainly split on both ERPs’ performance. But despite the minor glitches pointed out here and there, each group of users mostly had glowing reviews for their selected ERP. NetSuite and Workday’s ratings on different sites prove this.
- NetSuite – 4.1/5 stars (809 reviews)
- Workday – 4.4/5 stars (58 reviews)
- NetSuite – 3.9/5 stars (1,844 reviews)
- Workday – 3.9/5 stars (88 reviews)
Verdict: NetSuite and Workday users believe each ERP meets their needs, so we’ll consider this a stalemate.
NetSuite vs. Workday – Which is Best?
Your best bet is to consider the features of each ERP in light of your preferences and needs. But in a straight-up feature-by-feature comparison between NetSuite and Workday, the former comes out tops.
For one, it’s a complete business management platform that lets you take charge of all your critical business operations from one platform. On the other hand, Workday focuses on financial and human capital management.
Also, while NetSuite can serve businesses of all sizes, Workday is better suited to mid to large-sized enterprises. Plus, it’s easier to scale with NetSuite.
Click here to read our NetSuite implementation guide if you’re interested in getting more information on NetSuite.