Workday Rising 2024 delivered a wealth of insights, showcasing the company’s commitment to product innovation with its AI-powered solutions branded as Workday Illuminate. The conference also highlighted the company’s continued development on Workday Student and its other core products. Meanwhile, Workday’s Salesforce partnership is opening new data management and analytics possibilities for Workday customers.
Like many vendor conferences today, the central focus of the Workday Rising event in Las Vegas was on artificial intelligence. Specifically, Workday has introduced new AI capabilities under the brand Workday Illuminate. Athena Karp, who joined Workday through the acquisition of her AI company, HiredScore, voiced her commitment to taking an intentional, ethical approach to leveraging AI for the right problems. Karp’s experience and expertise will play a pivotal role in shaping Workday’s evolving AI strategy.
Workday has been building its capacity in AI for many years, with a thoughtful approach that is now manifesting in its newest component — agents. Workday Illuminate’s agents are designed to improve user experiences and automate cross-platform tasks to support critical operational areas, including travel and expenses, employee recruitment, and student advising. Workday has also introduced an innovative agent that analyzes platform usage and transactions to optimize customer system configuration. The goal is to help customers identify valuable features and enhance workflow efficiency.
Workday also showcased its AI-driven innovations within Workday Student. For example, Workday demonstrated how AI will analyze a student’s academic history, performance, and preferences to offer tailored recommendations for course selections, career paths, and extracurricular activities, helping advisors provide more personalized and impactful guidance. Further, Workday’s “Learn to Earn” initiative leverages the company’s extensive HR data ecosystem, including job postings from Workday’s customer network and partner organizations, to guide students from academic interests to internships and careers.
Other notable innovations in Workday Student include configurable communication and action journeys to guide students through key processes like onboarding and registration, along with strategic SMS messaging to boost student engagement.
Conversations with several customers revealed that the Workday Student go-lives over the past year are encountering fewer issues compared to previous years. The common theme from recently implemented institutions has been the quality of their implementations — not perfect but lacking critical problems. As one leader succinctly stated, “If there had been critical issues, we wouldn’t be live.” This represents a significant shift for Workday Student as it aims to achieve 100 live institutions by 2026.
During a discussion between Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach, Workday emphasized its established partnership with Salesforce, unveiling AI agents that offer two-way integration. Workday agents will be able to access Salesforce agents, and vice versa, enabling employees to seamlessly access data across both platforms. This integration will simplify cross-platform processes and enhance data analysis capabilities.
Additionally, Workday’s partnership with Salesforce facilitates streamlined, high-efficiency access to finance and HCM data via the Salesforce Data Cloud, where clients can leverage advanced AI and analytics capabilities. Notably, this partnership appears to be the initial phase of integrating Workday data with external platforms, opening new data management possibilities for Workday customers. However, it’s important to note that Workday Student data is not currently being shared. The timeline for when this critical student data may be integrated with Salesforce, where many customers also store student information, has not yet been disclosed.
While the headlines at Rising primarily centered on AI, Workday also highlighted significant progress in other areas, including the Workday Marketplace, Workday Extend, and its core products. Despite the intense focus on the AI landscape, Workday remains committed to the development of its core products. The company continues to prioritize the breadth and extensibility of its platform and is actively investing in incubating new technologies to expand its business and foster growth among existing customers.
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