Workday Surprises the IPO Market and Acquires Adaptive Insights

Key Stakeholders: Chief Information Officers, Chief Financial Officers, Chief Operating Officers, Chief Digital Officers, Chief Technology Officer, Accounting Directors and Managers, Sales Operations Directors and Managers, Controllers, Finance Directors and Managers, Corporate Planning Directors and Managers

Why It Matters: Workday snatched Adaptive Insights away from the public markets only days before IPO, acquiring a proven enterprise planning company, a trained enterprise sales team, and a team deeply skilled in ERP and enterprise application integration.

Top Takeaway:  Amalgam believes Workday’s acquisition of Adaptive Insights provides a net-win for current Adaptive Insights customers, Workday customers seeking more resources dedicated both to financial planning and workforce planning, and Adaptive Insights partners looking for enterprise product enhancements.

On June 11, 2018, Workday announced signing a definitive agreement to purchase Adaptive Insights, a cloud-based business planning platform. Workday will pay about $1.55 billion to fully acquire all shares of Adaptive Insights. This acquisition occurs only three days before Adaptive Insights was scheduled for a $115 million IPO on Thursday, June 14th, which was estimated to value the company at $705 million. This IPO was expected to be successful based on Adaptive Insights’ strong subscription revenue & revenue renewal metrics described in the S-1. With this acquisition, Tom Bogan will continue to lead the Adaptive Insights business unit and report to Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri and the Adaptive Insights team is expected to remain relatively intact.

Amalgam provides further details in the Market Milestone Workday Acquires Adaptive Insights and Gets a Leg Up On Oracle NetSuite where we explore:

• Adaptive Insights as a pure-play Cloud EPM player
• Adaptive Insights’ relationship with NetSuite
• What Workday gains by purchasing Adaptive Insights
• What Adaptive Insights’ customers and partners should expect
• Who wins and loses from this acquisition