We recently published a list of 12 Best Enterprise Software Stocks to Buy Now. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Workday Inc. (NASDAQ:WDAY) stands against other best enterprise software stocks to buy now.

In 2024, the global enterprise market size was estimated at $263.79 billion, according to Grand View Research. It’s expected to now grow at a CAGR of 12.1% from 2025 to 2030, due to the increasing demand for automated and integrated solutions. Enterprise software becomes more desirable as organizations seek reduced reliance on HR to eliminate manual errors and automate routine tasks. Therefore, ERP (enterprise resource planning), CRM (customer relationship management), and data analytics software are becoming increasingly popular.

Enterprise software is actively transforming with the integration of AI technologies, which changes how it’s designed, deployed, and utilized. According to Endava, GenAI is driving this transformation by incorporating creative and analytical capabilities into enterprise applications. This enables software to undergo intelligent tasks like generating reports, creating personalized training materials, and writing codes. AI not only automates manual jobs but also allows hyper-personalization of customer-facing enterprise software. This allows platforms like CRM and e-commerce to deliver targeted content and recommendations, which leads to higher customer satisfaction and improved sales. This is fueled by adaptive AI-enhanced enterprise software that learns from vast datasets to provide real-time and individualized interactions.

AI-driven automation is also becoming more popular in core business processes. ERP and workflow management systems are automating complex tasks and reducing manual intervention to improve overall efficiency. Enterprises are streamlining operations and making data-driven solutions through the integration of now-standard features like process mining, intelligent document processing, and predictive analytics. Agentic AI is further pushing enterprise software towards greater autonomy. These are AI systems that act like human agents and autonomously perceive, reason, and analyze data to achieve certain goals. As enterprise software continues to integrate advanced AI capabilities in its regular applications, the technology becomes more proactive and intelligent.

Our Methodology

We sifted through ETFs and financial media reports to compile a list of the top enterprise software stocks. We then selected the 12 stocks that were the most popular among elite hedge funds and that analysts were bullish on. The stocks are ranked in ascending order of the number of hedge funds that have stakes in them, as of Q4 2024. The hedge fund data was sourced from Insider Monkey’s database which tracks the moves of over 900 elite money managers.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).

Workday Inc. (NASDAQ:WDAY)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 89

Workday Inc. (NASDAQ:WDAY) provides enterprise cloud applications through its direct sales organization. Its offerings include financial & human capital management applications, and supply chain & inventory solutions. It offers Workday Extend for customers and their developers to build custom applications; and Workday Illuminate to accelerate manual tasks, assist employees, and transform business processes.

The company serves more than 11,000 customers which include over 60% of the Fortune 500 and 30% of the Global 2000. The company’s primary revenue drivers are its Human Capital Management (HCM) and Financial Management applications, which now use AI for higher efficiency. More than 2,000 customers use both HCM and Financial Management. 30% of the company’s net new wins in Q4 2024 were full-suite deals. The demand for AI-driven solutions is generally increasing. 30% of the customer expansions now involve AI SKUs.

Workday Inc. (NASDAQ:WDAY) is launching role-based AI agents and also the Agent System of Record. The latter product is focused on managing AI agents alongside human workforces. On March 31, Jefferies lowered the company’s price target to $325 from $350 and kept a Buy rating. This came from the broader price target reductions across the US software sector because of the potential macroeconomic headwinds. Jefferies expects a volatile H1 for the company, followed by a relatively stronger H2.

Parnassus Core Equity Fund stated the following regarding Workday, Inc. (NASDAQ:WDAY) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:

“We also added several new positions, including two in Information Technology: Workday, Inc. (NASDAQ:WDAY), a category leader for enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources. We believe Workday’s product stickiness and key initiatives such as its partnership with other service providers position the company well for incremental growth over the next few years.”

Overall, WDAY ranks 3rd on our list of best enterprise software stocks to buy now. While we acknowledge the growth potential of WDAY, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold great promise for delivering high returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than WDAY but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.