- New Capabilities Powered by Workday Illuminate™ Will Provide
a Centralized System for Managing an Organization's Entire Fleet of
AI Agents, From Workday and Third Parties Alike
- Workday is Leveraging Its 20 Years of Leadership in Human
Capital Management to Empower Organizations to Thrive in the World
of Agentic AI and Manage the Changing Workforce
- Workday Announces New Role-Based Illuminate Agents for
Payroll, Contracts, Financial Auditing, and Policy
- Companies Will be Able to Discover and Deploy AI Agents From
Workday, Customers, and Partners Through Workday
Marketplace
PLEASANTON, Calif., Feb. 11,
2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Workday, Inc. (NASDAQ:
WDAY), the AI platform for managing people and money, today
announced the Workday Agent System of Record to help organizations
manage their entire fleet of AI agents – from Workday and
third-parties alike – in one place. The Agent System of Record will
enable businesses to thrive in the age of agentic AI by providing
the essential tools to help effectively govern, manage, and
optimize their digital workforce.
As the number and complexity of AI agents grow, organizations of
all sizes face a new set of challenges: managing their deployment,
ensuring their security and compliance, optimizing their impact,
and managing costs. Without a centralized approach, they risk
fragmented operations, increased security risk, and difficulty
measuring the true value of their AI investments.
The Agent System of Record will provide an efficient, secure way
to onboard new AI agents, define their roles and responsibilities,
track their impact, budget and forecast their costs, support
compliance, and foster continuous improvement. By providing a
single system for managing AI agents being used across a company's
workforce, Workday will give IT and business leaders transparency
and control over the impact of AI agents on work.
"The workforce of the future will include both humans and AI
agents, and businesses that don't learn to manage this incredibly
complex reality will quickly fall behind," said Aneel Bhusri, co-founder and executive chair,
Workday. "We believe no company in the world is better positioned
than Workday to usher in this new era of workforce management in a
trusted, ethical way. Our deep understanding of human skills and
roles naturally extends to managing digital labor. The future is
here, and just like with the transition to the cloud, we're ready
to help our customers get there first."
"At Workday, we believe that humans and agents should peacefully
coexist in a way that amplifies human performance," said
Carl Eschenbach, CEO, Workday. "As
the system of record for more than 10,500 organizations around the
world, there is no one better than Workday to manage every part of
the workforce – employees, contingent workers, and agents – on our
trusted platform."
Unlock the Full Potential of AI Agents
With decades of experience in handling sensitive data and
managing complex workforce processes, Workday is a recognized
leader in responsible AI development. With the Agent System of
Record, organizations will be able to leverage the best AI agents
for their needs—whether they're from Workday, Workday customers, or
partners— while maintaining centralized control, governance, and
visibility.
Key benefits of the Agent System of Record include:
- Centralized Management: Manage all AI agents within a
single system to gain transparency into their impact and
effectiveness.
- Streamlined Agent Onboarding: Quickly onboard new agents
with defined roles, skills, and secure access to relevant data,
accelerating time to value.
- Managing and Optimizing Costs: Budget, forecast, and
optimize the ROI of AI agents to ensure efficiency and
effectiveness in delivering business outcomes.
- Support Secure and Compliant Deployment: Deploy agents
with confidence, leveraging automated configuration, access
controls, and policy enforcement to mitigate risk.
- Real-Time Operational Visibility: Monitor agent
activity, enforce policies, and track costs in real time to
optimize performance and ROI. Maintain continuous agent oversight
with real-time identity verification, agent orchestration, and
financial cost monitoring for optimal performance.
New Role-Based Agents Transform Entire Business
Processes
Workday also announced new role-based AI agents that customers
will be able to easily deploy and manage through the Agent System
of Record. While most agents in the market today are task-based and
follow specific step-by-step instructions, Workday's role-based
agents contain a configurable set of 'skills' that give them more
autonomy and the ability to more fully support people in their
roles. The agents can perform hundreds of individual tasks.
Workday's previously announced role-based agents include
Recruiting, Talent Mobility, Succession, and Optimize Agents. New
Workday agents announced today include:
- Contracts Agent: Continuously analyzes contracts across
the enterprise, surfaces obligations and opportunities buried in
unstructured data, and drives business actions to capture value and
mitigate risk.
- Payroll Agent: Identifies and updates invalid payroll
data. Automates audit workflows, surfaces insights, and recommends
fixes. Monitors compliance and delivers system updates.
- Financial Auditing Agent: Increases efficiency and
mitigates risk during the audit experience by connecting complex
business documents to monitor transactions, reconcile balances, and
review internal controls. Allows audit firms to develop apps that
connect directly to their Workday customers.
- Policy Agent: Continuously reads a company's latest
corporate policy details, then seamlessly and proactively sends
that information to employees and managers wherever they are asking
questions or doing work. Delivers a simplified self-service user
experience, more compliant transactions, and deflection of tactical
case volume, allowing the HR help desk to focus on more complex
cases.
Discover and Deploy Industry-Leading AI Agents Through
Workday Marketplace
AI Agents from Workday and Workday partners will be featured in
Workday Marketplace, making it easy for customers to discover and
deploy agents that meet their business needs. In the future,
customers and partners will also be able to augment, customize, and
complement AI agents that integrate seamlessly with Workday through
Workday's developer platform, Workday Extend.
The Workday Agent System of Record and new role-based AI agents
are currently in development and are expected to become available
later this year.
Support for the Workday Agent System of Record
"We believe the enterprise reinvention in the Gen AI era
will create a seamless working experience between people and
agents," said Julie Sweet, CEO,
Accenture. "The agent lifecycle should be fully managed. We
need them to be trained. They have to follow our compliance
policies. They need to understand our values, and they need to be
monitored for performance. That's why it's so exciting to see what
Workday is doing to help companies manage in this new
landscape."
"AWS is powering the future of AI agent development through
Amazon Bedrock's comprehensive foundation model ecosystem and
enterprise-grade development framework," said Swami
Sivasubramanian, vice president of Data and AI, AWS. "With
Workday's Agent System of Record, organizations will be much better
positioned to ethically manage all these agents. We're excited to
collaborate with Workday to reshape the future of work through
agentic AI. Together, we'll empower organizations to unlock
exponential value while maintaining our shared commitment to
security and responsible AI."
"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 R "Ray" Wang, CEO and
Principal Analyst of Constellation Research. "Most of the
executives we've spoken with seek solutions that provide the tools
they need to harness the power of AI while maintaining security,
compliance, and control. Digital workforce management capabilities
will be a significant step forward for the industry."
"Through Deloitte's strategic alliance with Workday, our AI
agents will enable organizations to address their specific needs
and industry processes to drive efficiency while maintaining
quality," said Abdi Goodarzi,
GenAI Products, Innovations & New Businesses Leader,
Deloitte. "These agents have the ability to perceive, reason
and act and are transforming enterprises by orchestrating workflows
and enabling human workforces to make better informed decisions
across functions like finance, HR, tax and more."
"The Workday Agent System of Record is a game-changer for
enterprise AI adoption," said Winston
Weinberg, CEO & Co-Founder, Harvey. "By centrally
managing agents and ensuring they adhere to the same strict access
controls and compliance standards as human employees, Workday is
building the foundation for a truly trusted and secure AI-powered
workforce. This is paramount for widespread enterprise
adoption."
"Digital colleagues, or AI agents, will become an increasingly
common addition to the workforce, and Workday's Agent System of
Record is well positioned to help organizations meet the moment of
monumental change," said Steve
Chase, Vice Chair of AI and Digital Innovation, KPMG
LLP. "We're thrilled to collaborate with Workday to help our
shared clients manage the new digital workforce with confidence
just as they do full-time employees and contractors."
"The Workday Agent System of Record represents a significant
advancement that will help PwC continue driving our clients to the
leading edge of AI innovation," said Matt Wood, US and Global Commercial Technology
and Innovation Officer, PwC. "By collaborating with Workday, we
help our clients adopt Workday delivered AI capabilities, including
the use of agents, to make AI intrinsic to everything they do with
a focus on compliance, optimizing costs, and driving continuous
improvement. We look forward to helping our clients unlock new
opportunities and achieve their business goals through this
innovative platform."
"More and more business leaders are deploying agents in their
organizations and considering how digital labor can help them
scale," said Adam Evans, EVP and
GM, Salesforce AI. "Workday is making it easy to incorporate
and manage AI agents right alongside human workforces to augment
employee bases with always-on digital labor. Last year, Salesforce
and Workday partnered to develop agents for employee service use
cases, and soon, Agentforce agents will be available on the Workday
Marketplace to even more HR and finance professionals who use
Workday to manage their human – and now agentic – workforces. We
look forward to continuing to innovate together and empowering more
businesses with digital labor."
"At Team Car Care, we've already experienced firsthand the power
of Workday's AI capabilities, which are making a real impact on our
bottom line," said Matt
Castonguay, CFO, Team Car Care. "That's why we're so
excited about the Workday Agent System of Record. As we continue to
explore the potential of AI, having a comprehensive platform like
this will be critical."
For More Information
- Join our digital launch, "Agentic AI: A New Era of Workforce
Management," on February 12 at
10:00am PT/1:00pm ET to learn more about the Workday Agent
System of Record.
- Read about Workday Illuminate™ – the next generation of Workday
AI.
- Learn about Workday AI agents.
- Become an enterprise AI expert with Workday AI
Masterclass.
About Workday
Workday is the AI platform that helps
organizations manage their most important assets – their
people and money. The Workday platform is built with AI at the
core to help customers elevate people, supercharge work, and move
their business forever forward. Workday is used by more than 10,500
organizations around the world and across industries – from
medium-sized businesses to more than 60% of the Fortune 500. For
more information about Workday, visit workday.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains
forward-looking statements including, among other things,
statements regarding Workday's plans, beliefs, and expectations.
These forward-looking statements are based only on currently
available information and our current beliefs, expectations, and
assumptions. Because forward-looking statements relate to the
future, they are subject to inherent risks, uncertainties,
assumptions, and changes in circumstances that are difficult to
predict and many of which are outside of our control. If the risks
materialize, assumptions prove incorrect, or we experience
unexpected changes in circumstances, actual results could differ
materially from the results implied by these forward-looking
statements, and therefore you should not rely on any
forward-looking statements. Risks include, but are not limited to,
risks described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange
Commission ("SEC"), including our most recent report on Form 10-Q
or Form 10-K and other reports that we have filed and will file
with the SEC from time to time, which could cause actual results to
vary from expectations. Workday assumes no obligation to, and does
not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements
after the date of this release, except as required by law.
Any unreleased services, features, or functions referenced in
this document, our website, or other press releases or public
statements that are not currently available are subject to change
at Workday's discretion and may not be delivered as planned or at
all. Customers who purchase Workday services should make their
purchase decisions based upon services, features, and functions
that are currently available.
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SOURCE WORKDAY, INC.
