Workday outlined Workday Illuminate, its next-generation AI systems, AI agents across HR and financial processes and new interfaces. In addition, Workday acquired Evisort.
The news, announced at Workday Rising, highlights how enterprise software vendors are pushing AI agents to automate work. In many ways, generative AI and agents could be the new user interface for many applications.
Workday is using AI to create one experience and Workday Assistant to streamline work on its platform and integrate with other apps. Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller recently did a deep dive on Workday's AI strategy.
Mueller said:
"Workday realizes it cannot build it all by itself and needs the power of the platform to enable customers and partners to build the necessary automation they need. For customers, this means owning their automation destiny, and not waiting for roadmap, customer councils and more. It also opens a digital disruption strategy that allows to disrupt their makers with software Innovations. For partners, Workday Extend opens new revenue streams, allowing them to achieve better profitability than with traditonal time and labor."
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Here's a breakdown of the Workday announcements:
Workday Illuminate
Workday announced its next-gen AI platform, Workday Illuminate. Illuminate models are built on 800 billion transactions across Workday's platform. The aim of Illuminate is to provide context around HR and finance processes.
Carl Eschenbach, CEO of Workday, said the company's AI strategy is aimed at easing enterprise implementation headaches with "tangible business value, responsible innovation, and user-centric design at the forefront."
Workday Illuminate, which is available now, includes:
- Generative AI tools to create content including job descriptions, talent highlights, messages, articles and contracts in addition to insights.
- Workday Assistant works across the platform to offer assistance and guidance on routine HR and finance tasks.
- AI orchestration of processes as well as agents to operate for users.
- The ability to tap into partners for additional AI applications via Workday AI Gateway.
AI Agents
Workday launched four new AI agents across HR and finance functions. The agents-- Recruiter, Expenses, Succession, and Workday Optimize Agents--are geared to automate workflows.
With Salesforce push, AI Agents, agentic AI overload looms
According to Workday, the new agents are the first in a line of addition from the company and partners like Salesforce and Microsoft.
- Recruiter Agent is built on the acquisition of HiredScore. Recruiter Agent will source passive candidates, automate outreach and recommend talent for open roles with automation for tasks.
- Expense Agent aims to eliminate manual expense reporting by creating reports, submitting and approving them. The system matches receipts with credit card transactions to create an expense line.
- Succession Agent is designed to make succession planning continuous with prompts to update plans and automatically recommend future leaders.
- Workday Optimize identifies bottlenecks in processes on the platform.
Expenses, Succession and Optimize Agents will be available for early access in 2025 and Recruiter Agent will be integrated into Workday in Spring 2025, but is available on HiredScore now.
Evisort
Workday said it will acquire Evisort, an AI document intelligence platform often used for contracts.
Evisort surfaces insights from legal and business documents stored in document management systems.
Workday's plan is to integrate Evisort across its HR and finance platform. With the ability to automate document creation, pull finance and operational details and surface areas, Evisort will give Workday the ability to appeal more to accounting and procurement departments.
