Scaling Smarter: How to Leverage Workday and Adaptive Planning for Real-Time Workforce Forecasting

One of the most difficult questions HR and Finance leaders often face isn’t “how many people do we need?” — it’s “when, where, and with what skills will we need them?”

At Kognitiv, we’ve enabled a scalable technology stack that answers that question with confidence, speed, and data. By combining Workday HCM, Adaptive Planning, and Salesforce, we’ve unlocked an integrated workforce planning engine that helps us forecast Full Time Employee (FTE) needs, anticipate skill gaps, and align hiring plans to real customer demand.

Here’s how it works — and the business value it brings.

🎯 The Challenge: Static Plans in a Dynamic Business

Organizations similar to Kognitiv who operate in a fast-paced environment where customer projects, internal initiatives, and skill requirements shift constantly, traditional budgeting and headcount planning can often feel too static to keep up with our dynamics. Forecasting based on historical ratios or top-down estimates can lead to risks — either in the form of delayed hiring or underutilized teams.

We require a more dynamic solution that can:

• Track skills demand linked to actual project and support ticket activity
• Forecast workforce needs down to the role, region, and timeline
• Integrate Finance and HR into a single, agile planning process

The Perfect Tech Stack: Workday + Adaptive + Salesforce

To solve this, we built a planning model with these key components:

• Workday HCM
  Defines skill supply by capturing employee skills, roles, and profiles across the organization.
• Projector (Time Tracking) & Zendesk (Ticketing System)
  Help determine current resource utilization and bandwidth, based on time allocation and active workload.
• Salesforce
  Provides insight into future skill needs by analyzing opportunities and demand in the sales pipeline.
• Adaptive Planning
  Brings it all together to perform skill supply vs. demand analysis, supporting strategic workforce planning and decision-making.

This brings objectivity to skill forecasting and removes guesswork from capacity planning.

The Business Value: Better and Faster Decisions

With this skills planning stack in place, the impact has been significant:

• Faster hiring alignment – Identify potential skill gaps 2–3 quarters ahead to provide recruiters with the lead time they need to hire effectively.
• Optimized workforce mix – Forecasting helps balance FTEs, contractors, and internal mobility based on projected demand.
• Budget precision – Finance and HR can now use shared assumptions, models, and data to avoid last-minute surprises.
• Higher utilization – By integrating Workforce Planning to ticket and project data, dynamic organization will be able to get ahead of resourcing shortfalls and avoid idle capacity.

Lessons Learned for HR & IT Leaders

If your organization is struggling with siloed planning processes, reactive hiring, or misaligned headcount forecasts, here’s what we’ve learned:

• Start with skills – Increased headcount does not always solve increased demand. Skills-tagged demand tied to real work gives forecasting credibility and builds stronger teams.
• Break down silos – Finance, HR, and delivery leaders must use a shared data model to effectively plan together.
• Automate the inputs – With Prism Analytics and ticket/project integrations, you can bring live data into your forecast — not just spreadsheets.

Looking Ahead

At Kognitiv, we see Workforce Planning as more than just an HR task, but as a strategic business function that connects people, performance, and profit. By building a flexible, data-driven planning ecosystem, we’re not just forecasting headcount, we’re also enabling real and sustainable growth.

And the best part? It scales.

If you would like to learn more about optimizing your business with Workday Adaptive Planning, watch our on-demand webinar below to hear from our experts or contact us for a comprehensive evaluation.