Workday taps HTML5 to bring the appear and feel of Google, Amazon, and LinkedIn to corporate apps on desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

Cloud-based enterprise applications vendor Workday announced Thursday that it’s bringing a client-web-app appear and feel to its human capital management and fiscal applications.

Expanding its use of HTML5 from mobile devices to the desktop, Workday says it’s poised to deliver a clean look, better usability, and a consistent user experience to desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Going beyond interface design, Workday has also introduced an agile-development, test, and release approach that it says will improve the company’s strategy to introducing new features.

Workday’s new look is already visible to customers in preview mode. Those people who are able to take it into production could be ready to turn it on once Feb. 3. Inspired by the likes of Google, Amazon, and LinkedIn, the hot look is described as simple and utilitarian, with a good number of white space and user-friendly functionality. As an example, as you begin to type in names of workers, business processes, or transaction types, you will see type-ahead suggestions, just as you do on Google. Personnel profiles inside the HCM app employ the type of iconography and white space you spot on Amazon or LinkedIn.

[How are competitors responding to Workday’s progress? Read SAP Doubles Down On Cloud Computing.]

The new desktop and laptop experience uses HTML5 and does away with the Flash rendering previously used. Workday switched to HTML5 for its mobile web app, introduced 18 months ago, and it says the time was right to modify the desktop experience.

“HTML5 has grown up a great deal from the early days, and we will now do such things as drag and drop, resizing, and touch-optimized experiences at the desktop in addition to mobile devices,” said Joe Korngiebel, Workday’s VP of user experience, in an interview with InformationWeek.

Workday also has native apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android, but these, too, are said to be in line with the mobile web app and new browser-based desktop/laptop experience. The brand new desktop/laptop feel and look will go live for all customers by April.

Thanks to Workday’s new agile-development approach, which eliminates the separation between the vendor’s development and production environments, users can experience the hot interfaces in a preview mode using their very own data, application configurations, business logic, and process flows. Within the old approach, users could only preview new features using generic demos.

“Now customers can see how new features will work with their complete production system, and they’re going to discover in a preview mode, not a production mode, the way it works for his or her environment,” said Mike Frandsen, Workday’s VP of goods. This provides Workday better and more complete feedback on new features in order to iterate and improve functionality before a last release.

And regarding releases, on Thursday Workday also introduced Workday 21, the most recent version of the company’s HCM and Financials apps. Upgrades to the HCM app include more consistent functionality across desktop, tablet, and smartphone interfaces; new dashboards tracking compliance with the Affordable Care Act; and improved workforce scheduling functionality. Financials upgrades include improved reporting and drill-down exploration of information and a more Excel-like feel and appear.

“At the least 95% of our Financials users have [Microsoft] Excel on their desktops, they usually want to have the ability to move financial information from side to side between Workday and Excel,” said Frandsen. “We wish to ensure that our UI looks and acts similar to when users export something into Excel.”

Workday is not the only enterprise applications vendor specializing in improving its user interfaces. SAP and Infor have also introduced modern, user-friendly interfaces with a shopper-web inspired appear and feel. But where these are interfaces for the vendor’s most in-demand interactions, Workday has brought a wholly new feel and look to all of its cloud-based applications.

Doug Henschen is executive editor of InformationWeek, where he covers the intersection of enterprise applications with information management, business intelligence, big data, and analytics. He previously served as editor-in-chief of Intelligent Enterprise, editor-in-chief of Transform magazine, and executive editor at DM News.

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