Workday is already a hub to manage human capital. Now it wants to manage fleets of digital labor--AI agents from Workday as well as third parties--via Workday Agent System of Record.
The company also outlined Workday Illuminate AI agents for payroll, contracts, financial auditing and policy. Workday's agents ride along with the AI agent management platform and marketplace for AI agents. Workday launched Illuminate at Workday Rising in September.
Workday argued that it is already the system of record for more than 10,500 organizations so managing the deployment and returns on investment from AI agents is a natural extension. CEO Carl Eschenbach said Workday's platform can "manage every part of the workforce – employees, contingent workers, and agents."
Constellation Research CEO Ray Wang said Workday's centralized system to manage AI agents makes sense. "The rise of AI agents in the enterprise has created an urgent need for a centralized system of record to manage and govern this increasingly complex landscape," said Wang.
Amazon, Accenture, Deloitte, Salesforce, PwC and KPMG were among the partners saying Workday's AI agent management platform fills a void. The system gives enterprises the ability to onboard AI agents, define roles and responsibilities, track impact, returns and budget and support compliance.
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Key points about Workday's Agent System of Record include:
- Centralized management.
- Agent onboarding, which provides secure access, defines roles and skills.
- Cost management and optimization of AI agents with budget forecasting and returns.
- Compliance tools to manage controls and policy enforcement.
- Real-time identity verification, agent orchestration and cost management.
To go along with that Agent System of Record, Workday also launched the following agents that will be available in Workday Marketplace:
- Contracts Agent analyzes contracts across the enterprise and surfaces key items buried in unstructured data. This use case was also recently highlighted by airline United.
- Payroll Agent, which identifies and updates invalid payroll data and automates audit workflows.
- Financial Auditing Agent to monitor transactions, reconcile balances and review internal controls.
- Policy Agent, which reads corporate policies and proactively delivers information to employees.
Workday Chief Product Officer David Somers said in a blog post that enterprises have a responsibility to manage its digital workforce alongside humans and control AI agent sprawl.
"We've still got some hurdles to overcome. Accuracy, consistency, bias, speed, and cost are all things we need to consider carefully when implementing agentic AI within organizations. That's why it's so important to set clear boundaries and rules for how they operate. Just like we wouldn't give a new employee free rein over sensitive systems, we need to control what our AI agents can access and do."
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