Comments on: I’m ERP, I’m Workday

By: Wiki Witch of the East-- C'est moi. « ITSinsider

Wiki Witch of the East-- C'est moi. « ITSinsider — Tue, 15 May 2007 22:24:30 +0000

[...] when I can’t persuade non-e2.0 evangelists to use wikis. DEATH to group email is my new motto. Jeff Nolan wrote recently about how Workday had mimicked Apple’s fabulous spots for the Mac comparing [...]

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 14 May 2007 18:38:38 +0000

Hi Nimish,
It was great seeing you at SW2007.

You are right on all of the points above, and one of the reasons why I linked to the video was to help them spread it. I like what Workday is doing, and have posted before about how they have the street cred and the $$ to do something more disruptive in ERP than most companies.

BTW, I hear that SF is going to roll out more modules that would traditionally be called ERP so I would imagine that Workday’s primary competitor is probably going to be SF and not SAPacle.

By: Nimish Mehta

Nimish Mehta — Sun, 13 May 2007 21:09:32 +0000

Hey there Jeff – Long time no see (!). I hear you on the PC vs Mac share argument, but if you are an upstart, it’s not bad to take on a controversial / aggressive stance. I think this is a bunch of guys in a startup (Jeff Pulver new VP Marketing is the bloated ERP guy if you didn’t recognized him ), having fun poking fun at the giant(s) without spending too much money. If they are so lucky as to get anywhere near even a few percent of the momentum of any of the big guys and if these ads help in that even a little bit, it would be worth it. They do need to make the “PC” (ERP) more likeable but the approach is ok imho…

I think Marc B is the poster child of corporate chutzpah (the Dalai Lama endorsement and the Siebel / Napoleon complex attacks being examples) and I think this approach helped him greatly overall. As his company gets larger, I notice that he is toning down that message in favor of a more mature “Our strategy is more innovative and it will make YOU MORE successful” message. The switch is spot on in my view.

Workday’s ads are low budget, viral in how they spread (if they are creative), and communicate the message easily. You have to remember that workday has ~5 customers or less (my guess). By no stretch is this startup a success yet.

My (also low budget) $0.01 .

Nimish