Workday vs Infor for Retail: Which Fits Your Business?

Workday suits retailers whose priority is a unified cloud system for HR, workforce management, talent and finance, with planning across both. Infor suits retailers who want industry-specific operational software, such as supply chain planning, warehouse management, workforce management and fashion product lifecycle tools, alongside HCM. The right choice depends on whether your biggest gap is people and finance, or merchandise and supply chain.

Key takeaways

  • Workday's retail offering centers on HCM, Workforce Management (time tracking, scheduling and labor optimization), Financial Management and Financial Planning.
  • Infor's retail page spans supply chain planning, Infor Nexus, WMS, PLM for Fashion, WFM and HCM.
  • Hourly scheduling, store labor and integration with your point-of-sale and merchandising stack often decide the outcome.
  • Run scripted demos using your own store scenarios before comparing price.

How do Workday and Infor approach retail?

Workday's retail industry page groups its offering into HR and workforce, finance and planning, and platform tools. On the people side it lists Human Capital Management, Workforce Management with Time Tracking and Scheduling and Labor Optimization, Employee Experience, a Candidate Experience Agent for screening and interview scheduling, and Workday VNDLY for contingent labor. On the finance side it lists Financial Management, Accounting Center, Financial Planning and Contract Intelligence. Workday Orchestrate (prebuilt integrations), Workday Extend (low-code apps) and Workday Marketplace (partner solutions, including retail-specific ones) round it out. The pitch is one cloud platform for people and money.

Infor's retail page takes a broader operational view. It lists supply chain planning (integrated business planning, demand forecasting, supply planning and production scheduling), the Infor Nexus supply chain business network, Infor ERP, Infor WMS, Infor PLM for Fashion, Infor Talent Science for predictive talent analytics, Infor WFM and Infor HCM, all on the Infor Industry Cloud Platform. The pitch is industry-specific software across the value chain.

Neither approach is better in the abstract. A retailer with mature merchandising and supply chain systems but weak HR processes has a very different shortlist from one replacing an aging ERP across the board.

Workday vs Infor: retail comparison

AreaWorkdayInfor
Core strength for retailUnified HCM, payroll and financialsIndustry-specific operations plus HCM
HR and talentHCM, Employee Experience, Candidate Experience AgentInfor HCM and Infor Talent Science
Time and workforceWorkforce Management: Time Tracking, Scheduling and Labor OptimizationInfor WFM
Contingent laborWorkday VNDLYNot listed on the retail page
FinanceFinancial Management, Accounting Center, Financial PlanningInfor ERP
Integration and extensionWorkday Orchestrate, Workday Extend, Workday MarketplaceInfor Industry Cloud Platform, including integration and application development
Supply chain and warehouseNot listed on the retail page; usually integrated from other systemsSupply chain planning, Infor Nexus, Infor WMS
Product developmentNot listedInfor PLM for Fashion
Best fitRetailers standardizing people and finance processesRetailers wanting operational depth from one vendor

Product names and modules change, so confirm current scope with each vendor during evaluation.

What matters most for retail HR and workforce needs?

Hourly scheduling and store labor

Retail lives on hourly labor, variable demand and frequent schedule changes. Both vendors now list dedicated workforce management products for retail, so the question isn't whether scheduling exists but how well it fits your stores. Test how each system builds schedules from forecasted traffic or sales, handles shift swaps and availability, and enforces break and predictive scheduling rules where they apply. Our guide to employee scheduling rights in the US summarizes the rules your configuration may need to honor. A demo with salaried office workers tells you little.

A practical test: give each vendor one week of real schedule data from a busy store, including a call-out, a shift swap and a minor with restricted hours, and watch a store manager fix the schedule live. How many clicks it takes, and whether the system warns about a rule breach before publishing, tells you more than any feature list.

High-volume hiring and onboarding

Seasonal peaks mean hiring and onboarding hundreds or thousands of workers quickly. Evaluate mobile application flows, onboarding on a phone and how fast a new hire becomes payable.

Payroll and multi-state compliance

Stores across many states or countries bring different overtime, pay frequency and tax rules. Ask how each vendor delivers payroll in your locations and what is handled by partners.

Recordkeeping matters during a switch, too. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the U.S. Department of Labor requires employers to keep payroll records for at least three years and wage computation records, such as time cards and work schedules, for two years. If you are moving off an older time and attendance system, confirm how those historical punches and schedules will stay accessible after cutover.

Integration with your retail stack

Point of sale, merchandising, e-commerce and loss prevention systems all need to share data with HR and finance. Our explainer on Infor integration options and ION covers how Infor connects systems, and Workday offers its own integration tools. Map every interface before you sign.

If you are also weighing payroll-led providers, our comparison of ADP vs Workday for retail businesses looks at that trade-off.

How should a retailer choose?

Choose Workday when

  • HR, payroll, talent and finance are your main pain points.
  • You want one data model for workforce and financial planning.
  • Your supply chain and merchandising systems are staying in place.

Choose Infor when

  • You need supply chain planning, warehouse management or fashion PLM from the same vendor.
  • Operational depth in retail and distribution matters more than a single HR and finance platform.
  • You already run Infor products and want to extend them.

Questions to ask both vendors

  • Can you demo scheduling and timekeeping for a store with fluctuating demand, using our data?
  • Which retail customers of our size and format can we speak with?
  • What is included in subscription versus partner services or add-ons?
  • How are updates delivered, and how much regression testing do they require?
  • What does a realistic implementation timeline and team look like for us?

For an Infor-specific checklist, see our article on key considerations when choosing Infor HCM.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Workday or Infor better for small retailers?

Both are typically aimed at mid-sized and large organizations, and implementations involve significant time and partner effort. Smaller retailers often find payroll-led HR platforms or retail-specific point solutions more practical. If you are growing quickly toward many locations, include both vendors in a discovery conversation, but compare total cost and implementation effort carefully.

Can a retailer use Workday for HR and Infor for supply chain?

Yes, mixed environments are common. Many retailers run one vendor for HR and finance and another for supply chain, warehouse or merchandising. The key is integration: worker, cost center and financial data must flow reliably. Budget for integration design, testing and ongoing support from the start.

Which system handles retail scheduling better?

It depends on your rules and store model. Workday lists Workforce Management with Scheduling and Labor Optimization on its retail page, while Infor lists a dedicated Infor WFM product. Ask each vendor to configure your actual scheduling scenarios, including demand-based staffing, availability, swaps and local labor laws, then compare usability for store managers.

Next steps

  • Write down your top five retail problems in priority order.
  • Map current systems and which ones will stay.
  • Build scripted demo scenarios from real store data.
  • Score vendors on fit first, then cost and implementation risk.

Last reviewed: October 2026.

Sources

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Why Workday Onboarding Breaks Down for Frontline Employees

Image
Workday onboarding breaks down for frontline employees because its default setup assumes every new hire has an email address, a personal device, time at a desk and comfort with a web portal. Warehouse, retail, food service and healthcare aide roles often have none of those. The fix is mostly configuration and process, not a new system. This guide is for HR, HRIS and operations leaders who run Workday and keep seeing incomplete onboarding records, late I-9s and new hires who quit before their first paycheck. Key takeaways Default Workday onboarding is built around desk workers. Frontline failures are predictable and mostly fixable through configuration. The five usual breakpoints are email-based logins, no reliable device, digital comfort, shift timing and language. Split compliance-critical tasks (I-9, tax forms, direct deposit) from tasks that can wait, and handle I-9 in person. Kiosks, ID-based logins, text reminders and a supervisor checklist close most of the gap. Measure...
Read more

How to Improve the Customer Experience (CX)

Customer experience is the sum of every interaction a customer has with your company, from the first ad they see to the way a return gets handled years after the purchase. Companies that take this seriously outperform those that treat CX as a support function. The ones that struggle tend to confuse customer satisfaction scores with actual improvements, or fix the wrong things. Here's a practical look at what actually moves CX forward. Start with where customers actually struggle Most CX improvement programs begin with surveys. Surveys are useful but limited, they capture what customers are willing to articulate after the fact, which tends to under-report friction in the middle of an experience and over-index on the most recent interaction. The richer data comes from observing behavior directly: where do customers drop off in a purchase flow? Where do support tickets spike? What search queries are people entering on your site that suggest they can't find what they're loo...
Read more

How Do I Log In and Sign In to Workday HCM

Workday HCM is the system your organization uses to manage everything from your pay stubs and benefits to time off requests and performance reviews. Getting in is usually simple once you know where to go, but first-time login, password resets, and single sign-on setups can trip people up if no one has walked them through it. Here's what you need to know. How to find your Workday login URL Workday doesn't have one universal login page. Each organization has its own tenant, a dedicated instance with a unique URL. Your company's HR department or IT team should have provided the URL when you were onboarded. It usually looks something like your-company.workday.com or wd3.myworkday.com/yourcompany . If you weren't given the URL, check your onboarding email, your company's intranet, or ask HR directly. Some organizations also link to Workday from their internal HR portal. Don't try to guess the URL, there's no central directory, and guessing wrong just takes...
Read more

Dollar General Store Walkout: Lessons for Retail HR

In March 2024, every employee at a Dollar General store in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, quit at once and posted "We quit" signs on the doors. They cited a lack of appreciation, being overworked and underpaid, and a dispute over a corporate rule limiting which unsold items could be donated. The store reopened about three hours later. Key takeaways The walkout was triggered by a policy change, but the notes employees left pointed to long-running frustration with workload, pay and recognition. Policies that clash with frontline values (such as throwing away usable goods) can become flashpoints when trust is already low. Explaining the reason behind a rule, and giving local teams a channel to push back, costs little compared with a full-store walkout. Retail and hourly employers should treat a mass resignation as a lagging indicator and track earlier warning signs. What happened at the Mineral Point store? According to reporting syndicated by Sinclair stations, customers ...
Read more

Apple Watch Health Features: Blood Pressure and Glucose

Image
Apple Watch can now alert you to possible high blood pressure, flag signs of sleep apnea and check for irregular heart rhythms, but it still can't give you a blood pressure reading like a cuff, and it can't measure blood sugar at all. The blood pressure feature is a pattern-based notification, not a measurement, and non-invasive glucose sensing remains out of reach for every consumer wearable. This guide is for buyers deciding whether to upgrade, and for HR and IT leaders fielding questions about wearables in wellness programs. Key takeaways Apple announced hypertension notifications in September 2025 for Apple Watch Series 9 and later and Ultra 2 and later, running watchOS 26. They flag possible chronic high blood pressure; they don't show readings. Sleep apnea notifications use the accelerometer to track breathing disturbances over 30-day periods. No smartwatch or smart ring is FDA-authorized to measure blood glucose without piercing the skin, and the FDA ha...
Read more

ERP Solution Guide: How to Choose the Best ERP for You

What Is an ERP System and Why Does It Matter? An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is software that integrates the core functions of a business — finance, inventory, procurement, human resources, manufacturing, and customer management — into a single, connected platform. Instead of data living in separate spreadsheets or standalone applications that don't talk to each other, an ERP creates one source of truth for the entire organization. For growing companies, the question is usually not whether they need an ERP but when and which one. Getting this decision right has long-term consequences. A poorly chosen ERP creates more problems than it solves — forcing teams to work around the system, creating data integrity issues, and consuming IT resources in an endless cycle of customization and maintenance. A well-chosen ERP, on the other hand, becomes the operational backbone that lets a company scale without proportionally growing its administrative overhead. Understandin...
Read more

The End of Remote Work: Why Companies Want You Back

Companies are calling employees back to the office because leaders believe in-person work improves collaboration, culture, mentoring and management, and because empty buildings are expensive. Amazon and JPMorgan Chase have moved to five-day mandates, and many others now require several fixed office days. Remote work has not ended, but the default has shifted. This article is for HR leaders and managers who have to design, explain or live with a return-to-office (RTO) policy, and for employees trying to understand what is driving it. Key takeaways RTO mandates are driven by collaboration, culture, management visibility and real estate costs. Work from home has settled at a stable level in the U.S. rather than disappearing. A large randomized trial found hybrid work cut quit rates by a third with no measurable hit to performance or promotions. Strict mandates without clear reasons tend to push out the people with the most options. The most durable policies tie office d...
Read more

UKG Union Contract and Overtime Rules for Multi-Site Food Plants

Multi-site food manufacturers running UKG often struggle with one thing: each plant has its own union contract, shift pattern and overtime rules, while the timekeeping system is configured centrally. The fix: document every contract rule precisely, map it to UKG pay rules and work rules, test against real timecards, and handle true exceptions with add-ons rather than core customization. Disclosure: The author works at CloudApper, which makes the UKG add-ons discussed in this article. Why are union contracts so hard to configure in UKG? Federal law sets a floor. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, non-exempt employees must receive at least one and a half times their regular rate for hours worked over 40 in a workweek. Collective bargaining agreements frequently go further, and food plants often have several agreements across locations. Common contract provisions include: Daily overtime after 8 hours, or after 10 on a four-day schedule. Double time on the seventh consecutive day o...
Read more

Infor HCM Software Engineer Jobs: Salary Factors and Skills

An Infor HCM software engineer's salary depends mostly on the type of employer, the depth of Infor platform knowledge, and location. Engineers who combine general software skills with hands-on experience in Infor CloudSuite HCM, Lawson, Infor ION integrations and payroll logic tend to command more than generalist developers, because that combination is scarce in the job market. What does an Infor HCM software engineer actually do? The title covers several different jobs, and pay follows the job more than the title. Broadly, these engineers build, configure, integrate and support the Infor human capital management stack, which includes core HR, payroll, benefits, talent management and workforce management. Many organizations still run the older on-premises Infor Lawson system alongside or instead of the cloud suite, so experience with both is common. Typical responsibilities include: Building and maintaining integrations between Infor HCM and payroll providers, benefits carrie...
Read more

How to Search in Workday: Find Reqs, Reports, People and Tasks

To search in Workday, type into the global search bar at the top of any page, press Enter, then use the category filters on the left of the results to narrow to people, organizations, tasks and reports or other object types. Workday only returns items your security roles allow you to see, so missing results often mean an access issue rather than a typo. How does Workday search work? Workday uses a single global search box rather than separate menus for each module. Everything in the tenant, from a worker's profile to a job requisition to a custom report, is an object that search can find if you have permission to view it. Three points explain most search behavior: Security trimming. Results are filtered by your security groups. A recruiter and a payroll partner typing the same term will see different results. Categories. After you press Enter, results are grouped into categories that appear as filters. Clicking one hides everything else. Related actions. Once you open an...
Read more