6 Things to Know About the Next Generation of Workday AI
The future of work is here, and it's powered by AI.
Workday Rising 2024 showcased the company's latest advancements in generative artificial intelligence (AI). The event highlighted how AI can streamline operations, transform business processes, and empower employees. Workday emphasized a practical approach to AI, focusing on real-world applications and responsible AI practices.
Here's a rundown of the six biggest AI-related developments announced at Workday Rising:
1. Workday Illuminate: A New Era of Enterprise AI
Workday Illuminate, the company's new AI platform, represents a significant leap forward in enterprise AI. Moving beyond AI task automation, this platform leverages Workday's vast dataset – encompassing financial and HR data from over 10,500 organizations across the world – to train powerful AI models capable of delivering transformative results.
Unlike traditional AI approaches, Workday Illuminate focuses on smaller, specialized language models, meant to be speedier and cost-effective. It also emphasizes the importance of context in AI to provide more relevant and accurate results. Overall, Workday Illuminate aims to deliver value through three avenues:
- Acceleration: making existing work faster;
- Assistance: providing real-time guidance and support, and;
- Transformation: reimagining entire business processes with AI orchestration.
2. Introducing Four New AI Agents to Streamline Workday
Workday is rolling out four new AI agents to help organizations automate, accelerate, and optimize key business processes:
Recruiter Agent
Building on capabilities from Workday's acquisition of HiredScore, the Recruiter Agent automates recruiting tasks including candidate sourcing, outreach, interview scheduling, and provides AI-driven insights into candidate profiles to identify top talent.
Expenses Agent
The Expenses Agent simplifies expense management by automatically creating and submitting expense reports. It leverages AI to match receipts with credit card transactions for a seamless experience for everyone.
Succession Agent
The Succession Agent helps organizations proactively plan for the future by prompting managers to update succession plans, recommending potential future leaders based on skills and experience, and generating personalized development plans for top talent.
Optimize Agent
The Optimize Agent acts as a continuous improvement engine for Workday. It can identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and deviations from best practices in business processes, flag issues, and suggest solutions to improve performance.
3. Workday Assistant Evolves from Chatbot to AI-Powered Companion
The Workday Assistant has evolved from a chatbot to a sophisticated AI companion. It can use its enhanced search capabilities and natural language processing to answer complex questions, proactively guide users through workflows, and overall provide them with an easier Workday experience. Workday Assistant will be integrated with popular collaboration platforms like Microsoft 365 Copilot and Slack, enabling users to interact with Workday's AI capabilities within their preferred work environments.
4. Workday Extend with AI Gateway: Empowering Customers and Partners to Build Custom AI Solutions
Through Workday Extend with AI Gateway, customers and partners can leverage Workday's AI capabilities and build their own custom AI applications tailored to their specific needs, which allows organizations to extend the power of Workday Illuminate and create innovative solutions adapted to their unique challenges.
5. A Commitment to Delivering Real Business Value
In a world saturated with AI hype, businesses seek solutions that provide tangible benefits and a positive ROI for a justified investment in new technologies. Workday Illuminate and the new AI Agents are designed to drive measurable results, whether it's increasing efficiency, reducing costs, improving employee engagement, or mitigating risk.
6. Prioritizing Data Privacy, Security, and Responsible AI Practices
As AI becomes more powerful and more deeply integrated into business operations, it's crucial to ensure that it's used responsibly and ethically. Workday shows a commitment to develop AI solutions that are fair, unbiased, and transparent. Workday’s enterprise-grade LLM platform protects user data privacy and security, ensuring a compliant AI with industry regulations and ethical standards while providing users with control over their AI experience.
The next generation of enterprise AI
The message of Workday Rising 2024 is clear: AI is no longer a futuristic concept; it's here, it's powerful, and Workday wants to make it accessible and beneficial for organizations of all sizes. With Workday Illuminate, a suite of powerful AI agents, the new and improved Workday Assistant, and a steadfast commitment to responsible AI practices, organizations are empowered to navigate the future of work with confidence.