Workday Presents a Management Tool for AI Agents: Agent System of Record

The Agent System of Record aims to provide an efficient and secure way to onboard AI agents, define their roles and responsibilities, track agent impact, budget and forecast costs, support compliance and drive continuous improvement. By providing a centralized system for managing AI agents deployed across the enterprise, IT and business professionals can gain visibility and control over the impact of these agents in their day-to-day work.

The increasing use and complexity of AI agents poses challenges for companies of all kinds: They need to manage the deployment of agents, ensure their security and compliance, and optimize their impact. Without a centralized approach, they risk fragmented workflows, increased security risks and problems measuring the real value of their AI investments.

"Until now, companies have managed two types of workforce: Permanent employees and external employees," explains Rob Enslin, Workday President and Chief Commercial Officer, in an E3 exclusive interview. "In the future, there will be a third category: digital agents," Enslin adds. These can act as recruiting agents or payroll agents, for example, and take on tasks independently. In order to manage these agents efficiently, companies need a system that records their skills, authorizations and work logs - just like with human employees. "Our Agent System of Record enables companies to manage not only Workday agents, but also agents from third-party providers such as Salesforce or specialized AI providers," says Rob Enslin, Workday manager and former SAP board member, explaining the new AI trend in the ERP environment.

Deterministic ERP

"Traditional ERP systems have a deterministic structure - they follow fixed, predictable processes," says Rob Enslin based on his experience at SAP and Workday. "Agents, on the other hand, work probabilistically, they learn and adapt. This makes many rigid processes superfluous. Companies will become more agile and decision-making paths will be drastically shortened. We will experience a time in which ERP systems no longer function according to rigid models, but adapt flexibly to business requirements."

Does this also mean that existing SAP customers are no longer threatened by vendor lock-in? Rob Enslin: "Technological upheavals always create new opportunities for competition and openness. Whether it was the move from mainframe to client-server, the introduction of the internet or the rise of the cloud - each of these developments has changed market dynamics. The same is now happening with AI and agents. Companies with flexible data models and open platforms have a clear advantage here."

Two decades of experience handling sensitive data and managing complex workforce operations make Workday the expert in AI ERP development. The Agent System of Record provides organizations with the best AI agents for their unique needs, whether offered by Workday, Workday customers or partners. At the same time, companies benefit from centralized control, governance and visibility.

SAP recently presented a new business suite that aims to bundle all company processes in a standardized environment. At the same time, many companies are increasingly opting for an open, modular architecture with Workday, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Oracle and SAP. Which future is more likely for ERP systems: a closed suite model or a composable ERP world? "I would say I'm more in the realm of composable ERP because I think the future is heavily dependent on how a complete suite is orchestrated by multiple vendors because innovation and the speed of change is critical. In my opinion, this will be the most competitive time for companies they have ever experienced in the software technology space - faster than the cloud, much faster than mobile and even faster than the internet. To be really successful, you have to drive innovation in multiple processes. If we look at the last two years, we've gone from the excitement of ChatGPT and writing emails in a whole new way to assistants and co-pilot assistants now moving into an agent-based world."

AI agent management

Agent System of Record enables the management of all AI agents in a single platform and provides transparent insights into their impact and efficiency, including efficient onboarding of agents: New agents can be quickly integrated with defined roles, specific skills and secure access to relevant data, significantly reducing time-to-value. Accurate budgeting, forecasting and optimization of ROI efficiently supports the achievement of desired business outcomes. Agent activity can be monitored in real time while policies are enforced and costs are continuously tracked. This enables optimization of performance and ROI. Features such as real-time identity verification, orchestration and cost monitoring ensure control over the entire agent pool at all times and guarantee optimal performance.

Workday also announced new role-based AI agents that can be quickly and easily deployed and managed through the Agent System of Record. Most agents currently available are task-based and follow specific step-by-step instructions. Workday's role-based AI agents, on the other hand, include a configurable set of "skills" that give them more autonomy and enable them to better support human employees in their tasks.

"In my view, it will be critical that companies orchestrate across multiple processes, and a composable ERP is something that no one can prevent. In fact, I believe that even the largest ERP vendors today don't cover more than 30 percent of their customers' IT footprints. That's the direction I'm thinking in. We want to convince with generic models on the Finance and HCM platforms. The ability for customers to extend and customize Workday has grown significantly in recent years. This offers us a great future, especially with AI. We don't have to struggle with multiple data models like companies that have grown over decades. Workday has followed a unified data model from the beginning, which benefits us significantly in the AI world today. I firmly believe that composable ERP is the future."

People with AI agents

The workforce of the future will include both humans and AI agents. Organizations that are overwhelmed by managing this incredibly complex reality will quickly lose out. Workday believes it is predestined to usher in this new era of people management in a trustworthy and ethical way. A deep understanding of human skills and roles should become the natural foundation for managing a digital workforce. "We firmly believe that humans and AI agents can coexist without conflict in a way that benefits human performance," says Carl Eschenbach, CEO of Workday.

AI agents from Workday and partners will be made available in the Workday Marketplace, where companies can easily select and deploy suitable agents. In the future, customers and partners will also be able to extend, customize and add AI agents that integrate seamlessly with Workday through the Workday Extend developer platform. The Workday Agent System of Record and the new role-based AI agents are in development and are expected to be available later this year. "The Workday Agent System of Record is a real game changer for the use of AI in organizations," said Winston Weinberg, CEO and co-founder of Harvey. "By centrally managing AI agents and ensuring they adhere to the same strict access controls and compliance standards as human employees, Workday lays the foundation for a truly trusted and secure AI-enabled workforce. This is the only way to achieve broad acceptance within the company."

"I think you could theoretically build an agent with superpowers that operates across different departments. But the complexity would be too high. Companies still have to develop and sell products and formulate strategies. I see agents more as building blocks of a composable ERP. They will considerably simplify or even replace many existing processes. The speed of decision-making will increase significantly as information is provided more quickly. Companies will have to be extremely competitive in the future," defines Workday President Rob Enslin at the end of the E3 interview.

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