Workday Rising 2024: Bigger, more colorful, GenAI
Las Vegas is no place for self-restraint: Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Tom Jones - and Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach? The venue is a statement: in line with the company's motto "Forever Forward", the aim is to outstrip the long-established industry giants. At the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, the focus was not only on concrete solutions for current business challenges, but also on visions that are set to become reality in the coming years.
Business rock star?
Business development to date, underpinned by double-digit sales growth, underlines Workday's claim to be a "business rock star". A key reason for this success is that Workday has been fully cloud-based since it was founded. This gives the company the flexibility it needs to drive its business model forward. According to Workday CFO Zane Rowe, this is a key differentiating factor for potential customers: "The adaptability of our platform is one of the main reasons why customers come to us, regardless of what system they were using before. Our use of AI and the ability to provide a comprehensive platform that enables our customers to realize the full potential of their data are key parts of our promise," the CFO told E3 magazine. Workday intends to deliver on this promise in the future with the AI platform Illuminate, which was unveiled in Las Vegas.
Let there be light: Illuminate
Powered by the world's largest HR and financial data set, Illuminate accelerates manual tasks, empowers every employee and ultimately transforms entire business processes. Illuminate's models are based on the more than 800 billion business transactions processed annually through the Workday platform. The company is also convinced that artificial intelligence will fundamentally change our lives and the way we do business in the coming years. "It will take an evolution to spark the AI revolution," explained Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach at the presentation of Illuminate. GenAI, or generative artificial intelligence, is at the heart of this development, which is currently still at an evolutionary stage. As part of the Illuminate launch, Workday also presented four new AI agents designed to make work easier in HR and finance.
Four new AI agents
"Recruiter", "Expenses", "Succession" and "Workday Optimize" anticipate and streamline common business processes to increase productivity and give users more time for strategic and meaningful tasks. They mark the next evolutionary step for AI in the enterprise environment, moving the industry from siloed AI capabilities to end-to-end business process transformation. These agents are just the beginning - more will follow to further simplify business processes for end users and support people in their work.
User experience as a value driver
Success depends not only on the technical possibilities, but also on whether the changes are accepted by people. "A seamless and intuitive user experience is one of the most important value drivers for buyers," says Ali Fuller, SVP Experience at Workday, in an interview with E3. "User expectations have changed a lot, not just with AI, but especially with generative AI.
Users use tools on the internet to create visual content or generate texts, for example. We also have to meet these expectations in the corporate environment, while at the same time ensuring that everything is secure, scalable and resilient. This is what sets enterprise software apart from what can be found on the open web. We want to ensure that our systems are based on correct data and context - and not on potential misinformation." With GenAI and the ability to answer queries in natural language, we are very close to achieving this goal. In addition to the topics of cloud, AI and user experience, Workday is also pursuing a different strategy to its competitors when it comes to partner management. Instead of flooding the market with a large number of partners, the company relies on hand-picked companies.
From partners and friends
"Workday has high standards for its implementation partners - with only about 100 partners, compared to thousands for companies of similar size. Workday also has about 300 to 400 software partners who can develop on the platform through the Built on Workday program, similar to Salesforce's App Exchange," Matthew Brandt, Senior Vice President Global Partners, told E3 Magazine. Salesforce is one of Workday's most prominent partners. In July, a strategic partnership was formed to develop an AI agent for HR services such as onboarding, occupational health and career development. The good chemistry between the two companies was also noticeable at the Workday Rising event: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff was connected live from San Francisco from his Dreamforce event, and his conversation with Carl Eschenbach from Workday was characterized by a friendly and humorous atmosphere - with mutual jibes à la "Who has the bigger event?" almost British humor, although both are US-Americans.
Billy Idol guitar for life's work
The presentation of the Customer Awards was not without its highlights. David Smoley, a customer from the very beginning, gave a pointedly critical report on the replacement of the HCM system of the time with Workday. He was initially ridiculed by his colleagues, who saw Workday as a toy that should not be taken seriously. However, he proved the critics wrong and was presented with a -en record as a lifetime award at the event. As a bonus, he received a guitar signed by rock star Billy Idol.
Summary
Workday Rising was a successful event of superlatives. The fact that entertainment and the communication of in-depth, technical and economic content complement each other to such perfection seems only possible in the USA and is also suitable as a guideline for solid software development. Fittingly, the closing event took place at Allegiant Stadium, the venue for the 2024 Super Bowl, with a concert by Gwen Stefani ("Just a Girl").
DE
EN
ES
