Workiva Adds Data Capabilities To Wdesk Platform With Wdata

Workiva Inc. (NYSE:WK) recently strengthened its flagship product, Wdesk platform by adding data preparation capabilities via Wdata. Notably, Wdata merges the company’s existing APIs and connectors with the newly data preparation capabilities. This process will help the customers to enhance, link and capture large datasets to Workiva’s Wdesk platform.

Consequently, Wdesk’s auditability, control and linking features will be augmented. Workiva continues to add innovative capabilities to its flagship offering-Wdesk. The new data-driven additions promise enhanced business insights that accelerate financial transformation. In fact, the company is leaving no stone unturned to aid its customers in their journey of digital transformation.

Wdata is a finance-focused offering that manages ad hoc requests for users and helps them to achieve faster and more reliable data exploration as well as analysis. The solution supports finance transformation across organizations to consolidate, organize and analyze financial data from various sources while maintaining accuracy.

With this expansion, customers will benefit from secured data collaboration into a cloud-based architecture throughout the entire financial reporting and analysis process.

Shares of Workiva have returned 26.2% year to date outperforming the industry's rally of 18.2%. The outperformance can be attributed to company's uninterupted focus on increasing capbilities of its Wdesk platform.



Cloud-based Financial Apps Gaining Traction

Per a Gartner survey, enterprises are migrating to cloud based financial management applications faster than anticipated. The surveyed senior finance executives reveal that by 2020, 36% of enterprises will leverage the cloud for more than 50% of their transactional systems on record.We believe this rapid shiftis likely to benefit Workiva as it continues to strengthen its cloud platform-Wdesk.

Per a recent ResearchandMarkets Report, the global financial services application market will be worth $117.1 billion by 2023 from $74.35 billion as of 2017. Notably, the market is currently growing at a CAGR of 7.9% and the time period under consideration is 2018-2023. We believe that since Wdesk is mostly used for auditing and accounting, the company remains well poised to benefit from growth of the relevant market.

Other Developments

In the recent past, Workiva partnered with Host Analytics, a cloud based provider of enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions. The companies together launched an API which realigns financial reporting processes. The customers will be able to import financial data from Host Analytics into Wdesk. The automated processes will help users save time while ensuring data accuracy.

Workiva also entered into an original equipment manufacturer (“OEM”) agreement with enterprise-application software provider, SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) . According to the OEM agreement, Wdesk platform will be incorporated with SAP Cloud Platform Integration. The “bundled” or comprehensive combined solutions will aid customers with auditability, control and linking features.

The company also integrated Wdesk platform with Anaplan’s Connected Planning platform to streamline the process of performance management reporting. Partnerships like Anaplan will aid Workiva capitalize on growth opportunities that the rapidly-growing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market presents.

To Conclude

Workiva continues to focus on developing its flagship product, Wdesk cloud platform, which is used for collecting, integrating, managing and analyzing business data, continues to gain traction.

Workiva continues to expand its existing customer base with its accounting, SOX and compliance software. This expansion in clientele along with a widening partner ecosystem is expected to drive growth.

However, Workiva faces intensifying competition in the Global Financial Service space from Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) Hyperion Planning, Accenture Financial Services, to name some.

Zacks Rank and Stocks to Consider

Workiva carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

In the internet software industry, Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) and Upland Software, Inc (NASDAQ:UPLD) are better-ranked stocks, both sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Long-term earnings growth rate for Twitter and Upland Software are currently pegged at 23.1% and 20%, respectively.

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