Workday Announces New AI Agents to Transform HR and Finance Processes

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Sep 17, 2024, 09:00 ET

Company Unveils AI-Powered Agents for HR and Finance Use Cases Including Recruiting, Expenses, Succession Planning, and Business Process Optimization

New Agents Anticipate and Streamline Common Business Workflows to Increase Productivity

LAS VEGAS, Sept. 17, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Workday, Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY), a leading provider of solutions to help organizations manage their people and money, today unveiled four new AI agents to dramatically simplify work across HR and finance. Recruiter, Expenses, Succession, and Workday Optimize Agents will anticipate and streamline common business workflows to drive productivity and free users up to do more strategic, meaningful work.

The agents, powered by Workday Illuminate, represent the next stage of enterprise AI – propelling the industry from disparate AI features to end-to-end business process transformation. The agents revealed today are the first of many to come from Workday as the company seeks to radically simplify business processes for end users and elevate humans at work.

"The potential for AI to revolutionize the way we work is undeniable, but for many companies, the path to significant impact has been elusive," said David Somers, chief product officer, Workday. "Workday Illuminate and our new AI agents are here to change that. By transforming end-to-end finance and HR business workflows, we're empowering companies to unlock exponential value across their entire organization."

Recruiter Agent: Find and Hire the Best Talent Faster. Workday is reimagining talent acquisition with this AI agent, which builds on capabilities available in HiredScore today, to streamline hiring tasks across Workday. Shared Workday and HiredScore customers are already seeing a 25% increase in recruiter capacity thanks to AI, and Recruiter Agent will take that a step further to proactively source passive candidates, automate outreach, and recommend top talent for open roles – significantly reducing time-to-fill roles and improving hiring quality. The agent automates tasks like creating job descriptions, sourcing candidates, and scheduling interviews, and provides AI-powered insights into candidate profiles. Recruiter Agent also integrates with communication platforms like Microsoft Teams, enabling hiring managers to receive notifications and leave interview feedback directly within the users' natural flow of work.

Expenses Agent: Automatically Create and Submit Expense Reports with AI. Companies around the globe spend, on average, approximately half a million dollars and nearly 3,000 hours correcting errors in expense reports annually. Expenses Agent virtually eliminates the need for manual expense reporting with near-touchless expense report creation, submission, and approval. An employee traveling might receive a text message prompting them to upload their breakfast receipt as soon as they complete their transaction at the cafe. The system will match the receipt with the credit card transaction and create the expense line automatically. When the employee checks out of the hotel, they send the receipt to Workday from their phone, and Workday alerts the employee when the hotel expense has been itemized and is ready for review.

Succession Agent: Find and Grow Future Leaders. Succession Agent transforms succession planning from a periodic exercise to a continuous AI-powered process. This agent automates the succession planning process and proactively helps managers identify and develop future leaders within their organizations. The agent can proactively prompt managers to update their succession plans, automatically recommend successors from across the organization, and generate personalized development plans for top talent to help them prepare for their next role.

Workday Optimize: Drive Business Efficiency and Identify Blind Spots. The Workday Optimize agent streamlines business processes in Workday. It identifies bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and deviations from best practices. For example, it can automatically flag and fix issues in the employee onboarding process, such as manual data entry or out-of-order steps.

In addition to these new agents, Workday is also building integrated agent capabilities with partners like Salesforce, Microsoft, and others to provide users with seamless assistance across the most-used enterprise platforms.

"To stay competitive in this rapidly evolving age of AI, companies need to figure out how to apply AI across entire business functions to drive real value," said Micky North Rizza, IDC. "Workday Illuminate and the company's new AI agents are paving the way for this transformation, empowering businesses to streamline operations, enhance decision-making, and achieve unprecedented levels of efficiency and agility."

The new AI agents and other latest innovations from Workday will be on full display at Workday Rising in Las Vegas this week.

Availability
Expenses, Succession, and Optimize Agents are expected to become available in Early Access in 2025. Recruiter Agent is available now in HiredScore and will become even more integrated with Workday in spring 2025.

For More Information

Learn more about Workday Illuminate, the next generation of Workday AI.
Read about the new Workday AI-powered user experience and Workday Assistant.
Become an enterprise AI expert with Workday AI Masterclass.
Register to attend Workday Rising sessions in the digital program:
- Innovation Keynote: The Workday Platform Drives You Forever Forward [KEY02], Sept. 17 at 8:30am PT.
- Workday AI: Strategy and Vision [PSVIT1890], Sept. 17 at 1:15pm PT.

About Workday
Workday is a leading enterprise 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.

© 2024 Workday, Inc. All rights reserved. Workday and the Workday logo are registered trademarks of Workday, Inc. All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

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.

SOURCE Workday Inc.