Recent Perspectives

We are transitioning from "Systems of Record" to "Systems of Action."

For two decades, Workday has served as the "System of Record," safeguarding an organization's most sensitive talent and financial data. While this role remains crucial, the "vault" model is evolving.

The partnership between Microsoft and Workday exemplifies this shift. By integrating Workday's AI agents into Microsoft 365 Copilot, the agentic ecosystem is addressing the "Toggle Tax" — the quiet, compounding productivity loss from switching between numerous apps and portals just to get work done.

Here's how this partnership redefines the enterprise experience:

• Meeting employees where they live — The goal isn't a better dashboard, it's resolved work. Organizations are reporting a large share of HR cases handled directly in the flow of work, without a support ticket ever being opened.
• Precision over "Guesswork" — With "people and money" having zero margin for error, this initiative focuses on actions grounded in verified source data and role-based security.
• The Identity Bridge and Governance — By connecting Workday's Agent System of Record (ASOR) with Microsoft Entra, AI agents receive a "digital badge," inheriting the secure permissions and identity protocols already trusted for your workforce.

The System of Record remains the trusted engine. Workday Agents in Copilot make it the System of Action: conversational, governed, and embedded where work already happens.

The question is simple: Are you still viewing your HR and Finance data as a vault, or as an engine to spur efficiency and creativity?

Read Maturecloud's related perspective on composable data access here.

The most interesting pattern in enterprise AI right now isn't who's building the best agents. It's who's enabling composable data access, so users can write their own skills to combine data across systems and act on it where work actually happens.

Pre-built flows solve part of this — beautifully — for known, repeatable work. Routing tickets. Answering policy questions. Matching invoices. Whether the steps are hard-coded or an agent runs them, the path is known in advance. They're fast, consistent, and scalable.

But there's a second opportunity that may ultimately be the bigger unlock. Not every question is predictable.

No product team built a flow for that question. But an employee with the right skills and connections can answer it in 30 seconds. Companies that pool cross-functional data are 9x more likely to drive innovation (McKinsey). Gartner predicts non-technical users will create 75% of all new data integration flows by 2026.

This is exactly where MCP (Model Context Protocol) is changing the game. 97 million monthly SDK downloads. Backed by the Linux Foundation, OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft.

The early movers are already leaning in:

• Workday's Sana ships 300+ composable skills with MCP support — reaching across all enterprise systems
• Google's Workspace Studio lets employees build AI agents in natural language — powered 20 million automated tasks in its first month
• Moody's is using MCP to give clients secure, real-time access to financial data through AI agents

The competitive advantage emerging:

• Flows for the known — automate what's predictable
• Composable MCP skills for the unknown — enable what's unpredictable
• Govern both thoughtfully, and trust your people to creatively combine data where work actually happens

The organizations that invest in both sides of this equation will compound productivity in ways we're only beginning to measure.

Ashu Garg at Foundation Capital nailed it. AI agents are making interfaces less central, but enterprise software was never just screens and buttons. It runs on systems of record, governance, policy, and shared processes. AI makes that infrastructure MORE important, not less.

He calls it the shift from Software-as-a-Service to Services-as-Software. Agents will collapse layers of the enterprise stack, but they still need a reliable source of truth and an auditable governance layer.

Look at the foundation Workday has spent 20 years building:

• Foundation Data Model (FDM) — structures how organizations actually breathe
• Business Processes — encoding policy, approvals, and governance
• Transaction Data — trusted by 65% of the Fortune 500
• Security — role-based access and audit trails in every layer
• Metadata-Driven Framework — rules and context are self-describing, making it inherently conducive for AI agents to understand and act

The biggest opportunity for Workday? Reimagining the experience. Multi-modal AI agents (Workday Illuminate) will replace menu navigation with natural conversations. Insights surfaced proactively. Workflows triggered through language.

The trust stays. The interface becomes intelligent. That's not bolting on AI — that's building in the execution path. Software isn't diminishing. But the manual way we interact with it is changing forever. This is the moment Workday was built for.

2025 marked a significant turning point in the ERP landscape, shifting the conversation around AI from "What is it?" to "How do we use it to scale Payroll, HR, and Finance?"

This is where the ERP Foundation Data Model (FDM) takes center stage — acting as the backbone that transforms raw data into actionable intelligence.

This year, we extend our gratitude to the customers and partners who joined us on the journey:

• Refining FDM for scalability
• Unlocking the capabilities of Prism and Accounting Center
• Architecting scalable integrations for operational excellence

Our mission remains focused on turning the potential of the Workday platform into tangible business value. As we look toward 2026, our commitment is unchanged — we're here to ensure the success of your operational foundation across process, data, and technology.

Wishing everyone a restful holiday season and a prosperous, data-driven New Year!

The MIT Iceberg Report reveals a striking truth: today's AI adoption is just the tip of the iceberg. While visible automation in tech roles accounts for just 2.2% of wage exposure (~$211B), the real potential lies beneath — AI can already perform tasks equal to 11.7% of the U.S. labor market, representing $1.2 trillion in value. The domains most exposed? HR, Payroll, and Finance.

For Workday clients, this isn't about replacing jobs — it's about redesigning how work gets done.

Here's how to turn exposure into opportunity:

Leverage Workday FDM as Your AI-Ready Data Foundation
AI is only as powerful as the data it learns from. Workday's Foundation Data Model provides a single, unified source of truth across HR, payroll, and finance.

Redesign Processes with Agentic AI Flows
Automate repetitive tasks and create adaptive workflows using Workday's embedded AI:

• Accounting automation, anomaly detection, and reconciliation
• Invoice scanning, prioritization, and intelligent routing
• Candidate and gig matching
• AI-powered learning and development

Augment Decision-Making with AI-Driven Insights
Move beyond automation to intelligence. Use predictive analytics and generative AI for sharper workforce planning, budgeting, and operational agility.

Reskill Talent for Strategic, Human-Centric Roles
Free teams from transactional work and redirect capacity toward innovation, leadership, and problem-solving.

When Workday Assistant first launched a few years ago, I often heard the same dilemma from customers: "Should we build a unified chatbot across all enterprise systems — or simply enable Workday's native Assistant for HR and/or Finance teams?"

It reminded me of an earlier era — when organizations debated whether to build custom self-service portals for managers and employees to aggregate tasks from diverse systems, or lean into the native UX offered by platforms like Workday.

In both cases, the outcome became clear:

• Custom-built portals couldn't match the rich, domain-specific UX of Workday — driven by the Workday People Experience — which has become the default gateway for HR and Finance self-service and personalized people experiences. While enterprise intranets still support content and communication needs, they are no longer the de facto interface for delivering personalized, role-based experiences.
• With the Workday Assistant Agentic AI roadmap, the Assistant now encompasses configurable, smart agents — Policy Agent, Payroll Agent, and Benefits Agent. It's no longer just a chatbot. It's a personalized, intelligent layer — and simply too compelling to overlook.

If you're thinking about how to design an Agentic AI roadmap to transform your HR and Finance operations, feel free to reach out — happy to share what we're seeing work in practice.

Google's launch of the A2A (Agent-to-Agent) protocol — backed by industry leaders like Workday, SAP, UKG, and Salesforce — marks a major step for enterprise clients. It introduces intelligent enterprise workflows powered by interoperable, Role-Based AI Agents across multiple vendor systems, and accelerates the path toward Workday's Agent System of Record vision.

These AI agents go beyond traditional bots — they grasp your objectives, devise strategies for success, and collaborate seamlessly:

• Hiring needs? A Recruiting Agent handles sourcing, screening, and interview scheduling
• Managing Salesforce access? A Provisioning Agent sets up secure roles and system access
• Ensuring compliance? A Legal or Policy Agent ensures adherence to regulations and internal policies
• Seeking marketing achievements? A Marketing Agent validates campaign readiness and asset compliance

Workday's Agent System of Record enables organizations to:

• Streamline operations by overseeing all agents, Workday-native or third-party
• Accelerate onboarding by promptly activating agents with specific roles, skills, and data access
• Optimize costs by forecasting and enhancing agents' ROI across various functions

The timing is right — the A2A protocol complements Anthropic's Model Context Protocol, enabling agents to collaborate with interoperability and context across the enterprise. The future of enterprise systems isn't more screens — it's intelligent, role-based agents working with and for you.

Amazon Bedrock's support for Model Context Protocol (MCP) marks a major step forward in business transformation through role-based enterprise AI agents.

By orchestrating MCP servers to securely connect with real-time business systems and data, this framework sets the stage for smarter, context-aware automations — with AI agents aligned to enterprise roles, governance, and workflows across systems.

The combination of Amazon Bedrock's infrastructure and MCP's connectivity standard creates a compelling foundation for enterprise AI agents that can:

• Connect securely to real-time business data across systems
• Operate within role-based governance and access controls
• Act across Workday, AWS, and third-party systems in coordinated workflows
• Scale intelligently without compromising data sovereignty or compliance

Excited to see how businesses will harness this to unlock new levels of efficiency and intelligence.