Play audio
ISG Research is happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Buyers Guide, an assessment of how well software providers’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Workforce Management Healthcare: ISG Research Buyers Guide is the distillation of a year of market and product research by ISG Research.
Workforce management (WFM) has long been the quiet engine of operational efficiency, keeping labor costs in check while ensuring the right people arrive at precisely the right
moment. In 2025, the discipline stepped into the spotlight. A still-tight labor market, lingering post-pandemic upheaval and a sudden flowering of generative and conversational artificial intelligence (AI) are remaking software roadmaps and daily practices. Where yesterday’s tools confirmed hours after the fact, today’s platforms predict tomorrow’s demand, surface the financial impact of every option before a single shift is published and deliver a low-friction experience that has become a survival imperative for any sector that relies on hourly talent.
ISG Research defines WFM for Healthcare as technology that marries traditional time and scheduling with patient-centered acuity forecasting, licensure validation, union and ratio compliance and fatigue-risk safeguards. It must ingest electronic medical-record data, census projections and clinical rotation rules to align nurse and clinician skills with dynamic patient needs while controlling overtime and premium pay. Integrated rounding, float-pool management and on-call tracking are baseline, as is secure mobile access that lets staff self-schedule, swap shifts and review credential expirations—all under the strict privacy and audit requirements unique to healthcare.
Only a decade ago, WFM technology was still dominated by on-premises time clocks and overnight batch processing. Mobile capability meant a clunky browser in kiosk mode, forecasts relied on static sales history and “integrations” were mostly flat-file exports to payroll. The turning point arrived as cloud providers rewrote scheduling engines for real-time memory, smartphones placed self-service in every pocket and early machine learning (ML) models began nudging managers when rosters drifted off budget. By the late 2010s, regulatory shifts—most visibly Europe’s working-time ruling and renewed U.S. overtime scrutiny—forced enterprises to log hours more accurately, propelling biometric clocks and app-based punches into the mainstream.
That compliance wave dovetailed with the employee-experience movement. Hourly workers started demanding the same transparency and flexibility enjoyed by knowledge staff: instant shift swaps, visibility into accrued pay and fair-chance scheduling. Software providers responded with consumer-grade interfaces, but the bigger leap came when AI matured enough to treat skills, preferences and cost as coequal variables. The result was a flywheel: richer data produced better forecasts, which justified deeper investment, opening the door to today’s generative assistants and real-time cost simulations.
Against that backdrop, enterprises now share four pressing needs. First, they must see labor risk in real time—wage exposure, fatigue flags and compliance drift—before the roster is locked. By 2027, two-thirds of enterprises using workforce management systems will benefit from having real-time visibility into the cost of schedules, including rates and
worker types. Second, they need elastic access to talent, pulling from gig marketplaces or agencies the moment core staff fall short. Third, precision has shifted from job titles to granular skill tags as production lines, patient acuity and omnichannel retail flows change by the hour. Fourth, frontline workers expect consumer-grade autonomy: choose shifts, check accrued earnings and resolve HR questions through a chat-style interface rather than a help-desk queue.
To satisfy those needs, successful WFM software must deliver a new technical baseline. Forecast engines have to ingest live signals such as point-of-sale flashes, IoT telemetry or census updates, not just historical averages. Rostering logic must weigh skills, certifications, preferences, regulations and real-time cost in one pass, then push confirmed hours straight to payroll and gig marketplaces without rekeying. Self-service must be conversational, allowing workers to swap shifts, request early wage access or dispute a punch in normal language. By 2027, one-half of enterprises using workforce management systems will assign work or shifts by skills required, not just job type, achieving much greater precision in optimizing resource deployments. Finally, open APIs and low-code configuration kits are essential so that scheduling, time and skills data can feed robotics systems, learning platforms and ESG dashboards without provider-only customization.
These same capabilities are now tuned for vertical nuance. Manufacturers couple AI schedules with machine-health alerts to re-sequence cross-trained crews only when lines need them. Healthcare providers blend electronic medical-record feeds, rotation rules and licensure checks to project staffing curves with clinical acuity. Retailers pair computer-vision footfall counters with promotion calendars to shape sub-hourly demand curves, letting associates instantly claim or trade shifts. Suppliers once known for generic clocks now release micro-bundles—food-safety checklists, OR-ready nurse rosters, loss-prevention analytics—tailored to the pain points of each industry.
For senior leaders, the challenge has outgrown the old mandate of “fill every slot.” They now juggle cost, compliance, skills, well-being and brand promise in one dynamic equation. Hourly workers remain the operational heartbeat of plants, wards and shops, yet they expect predictable pay, transparent growth paths and digital tools that feel like the apps they use at home. Enterprises that treat WFM as a strategic enabler rather than an administrative expense already see dividends: predictive rosters that curb overtime without understaffing, skill ontologies that feed succession pipelines and audit trails that give legal, finance, and HR the same real-time view of risk. WFM technology is racing ahead, but the winners will be those that pair automation with humanity—using intelligence to remove friction and improve decisions while doubling down on empathy, growth and trust.
To explore these dynamics in the depth they deserve, our 2025 research divides the workforce-management landscape into five focused guides—WFM Basics, WFM Suites, WFM for Healthcare, WFM for Manufacturing and WFM for Retail. Each report applies a common evaluation lens yet weights criteria to reflect the operational realities, compliance pressures and innovation priorities unique to its scope. Together, they provide a panoramic view of the market and a set of targeted benchmarks that let buyers zero in on the capabilities—and partners—best aligned to their context.
The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Workforce Management Healthcare evaluates products purpose-built to meet the operational and regulatory complexities of healthcare delivery. To be included, products must offer a healthcare-specific solution that supports shift-based and on-call scheduling, credential and compliance tracking, AI-driven patient demand forecasting, floating staff assignments, fatigue risk monitoring and emergency staffing protocols. Evaluation categories include staffing and credentialing, compliance and risk management, and patient and workforce coordination, in addition to core WFM functions. In a sector where patient safety, labor shortages and regulatory oversight converge, it is essential for buyers to assess whether a product is truly aligned with the realities of healthcare workforce management—not just broadly functional, but clinically relevant.
This research evaluates the following software providers that offer products that address key elements of healthcare workforce management as we define it: ADP, ADP WorkForce Software, Dayforce, Infor, isolved, Oracle, Quinyx, SAP, UKG, Workday and Zebra.
This research-based index evaluates the full business and information technology value of workforce management healthcare software offerings. We encourage you to learn more about our Buyers Guide and its effectiveness as a provider selection and RFI/RFP tool.
We urge organizations to do a thorough job of evaluating workforce management healthcare offerings in this Buyers Guide as both the results of our in-depth analysis of these software providers and as an evaluation methodology. The Buyers Guide can be used to evaluate existing suppliers, plus provides evaluation criteria for new projects. Using it can shorten the cycle time for an RFP and the definition of an RFI.
The Buyers Guide for Workforce Management Healthcare in 2025 finds Oracle first on the list, followed by ADP and UKG.
Software providers that rated in the top three of any category ﹘ including the product and customer experience dimensions ﹘ earn the designation of Leader.
The Leaders in Product Experience are:
- Oracle.
- ADP.
- UKG.
The Leaders in Customer Experience are:
- ADP.
- Oracle.
- ADP WorkForce Software.
The Leaders across any of the seven categories are:
- Oracle, which has achieved this rating in seven of the seven categories.
- ADP in six categories.
- ADP WorkForce Software in four categories.
- Dayforce and UKG in two categories.
- SAP in one category.
The overall performance chart provides a visual representation of how providers rate across product and customer experience. Software providers with products scoring higher in a weighted rating of the five product experience categories place farther to the right. The combination of ratings for the two customer experience categories determines their placement on the vertical axis. As a result, providers that place closer to the upper-right are “exemplary” and rated higher than those closer to the lower-left and identified as providers of “merit.” Software providers that excelled at customer experience over product experience have an “assurance” rating, and those excelling instead in product experience have an “innovative” rating.
Note that close provider scores should not be taken to imply that the packages evaluated are functionally identical or equally well-suited for use by every enterprise or process. Although there is a high degree of commonality in how organizations handle workforce management healthcare, there are many idiosyncrasies and differences that can make one provider’s offering a better fit than another.
ISG Research has made every effort to encompass in this Buyers Guide the overall product and customer experience from our workforce management healthcare blueprint, which we believe reflects what a well-crafted RFP should contain. Even so, there may be additional areas that affect which software provider and products best fit an enterprise’s particular requirements. Therefore, while this research is complete as it stands, utilizing it in your own organizational context is critical to ensure that products deliver the highest level of support for your projects.
You can find more details on our community as well as on our expertise in the research for this Buyers Guide.
Fill out the form to continue reading.