Ready for onboarding: Agentic AI, your AI agents

It sounds like science fiction: your teams also work with digital colleagues - role-based AI agents. "Agentic AI" marks the next big technological leap after cloud, big data, machine learning and generative AI. A new era is now dawning. Never before has a technology been so close to human intelligence. Carl Eschenbach, CEO of Workday, predicts: "AI agents will have a greater impact on companies than all their predecessors combined." In the DACH region, AI is considered a decisive strategic factor. More than half of companies are planning to invest significantly more in AI in 2025. And Gartner says that by 2025, 75 percent of CFOs in large companies will be using AI to make better decisions. Forbes is even talking about a "Year of Agentic AI".

But why is that?

Agentic AI is more consistent than anything previously known as AI. While generative AI fascinated with content generation, it lacks the transformative influence on companies. Because what drives companies forward? The thinking, ideas, intuition and power of humans - and not text from ChatGTP.

Agentic AI imitates human thinking more closely than ever before. AI agents act independently, they pursue goals, learn, interact with each other, make decisions, recognize patterns - and soon in thousands of agents.

Companies are already using them to redesign entire areas. In HR, AI agents search for applicants, contact them automatically and recommend top talent. This saves time and optimizes the success rate. They are also revolutionizing supply chains, optimizing inventories, checking contracts, preventing cyberattacks and much more.

Workday confirms: AI agents significantly improve human performance - in harmonious and conflict-free cooperation between man and machine. As the company with the world's largest HR data set of more than 70 million HR records and with over 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies as customers, Workday is ideally positioned both for the creation of new AI agents and for their management and integration into the human workforce.

Workday already offers AI agents for central business areas, from the Recruiting Agent, Succession Agent, Talent Mobility Agent to the Optimize Agent. There is also the Policy Agent, Contracts Agent, Payroll Agent and Financial Auditing Agent. In addition to the native Workday agents, there are agents developed with partners or customized by the companies.

What does Agentic AI need?

You need the right partner. Because AI agents have skills. A skillset defines a role. A role defines the employee. And every employee knows their place in the company. This applies to people as well as AI agents. To manage them all, HR needs a strong system. Workday calls it the "Workday Agent's System of Record" - it orchestrates the fleet of AI agents, governance, access and collaboration with people.

Carl Eschenbach, CEO, Workday: "Workday serves as the record-keeping system of choice for more than 10,500 organizations worldwide. So there's no better solution than Workday to manage every part of the workforce - whether permanent employees, contractors or agents - on one trusted platform." Learn more about Agentic AI, AI agents and Workday.

What CEOs and CIOs should look out for:

• Centralized management: Control all AI agents on a single platform; keep an eye on impact and efficiency
• Fast onboarding: Integrate new agents directly with clear roles, skills and secure data access
• Secure real-time monitoring: Automated configuration, access controls and rule compliance ensure AI agents via Workday
• Marketplace: Easy access to AI agents from Workday and partners in the Workday Marketplace