As it bears down on an annualized run rate of $10 billion, Workday is expanding aggressively into new types of technologies, solutions, partnerships, and acquisitions to keep pace with rapidly escalating customer expectations as well as increasingly capable cloud-centric competitors.
With primary competitors Oracle and SAP both having cloud businesses significantly larger than Workday’s, the 19-year-old software-as-a-service (SaaS) HR and Financials pioneer can no longer rely on being the only cloud-native game in town.
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So at this week’s Rising event in Las Vegas, Workday showcased a range of bold new steps designed to ensure it not only stays at the forefront of technological innovation in the cloud but also drives new innovations with partners and accelerates AI-native insights via acquisition.
The launch of Illuminate AI: As I outlined in yesterday’s analysis, Illuminate AI pulls together into a seamless continuum the various AI initiatives Workday has been pursuing aggressively for the past couple of years.
Four new AI Agents: Workday’s new chief product officer David Somers held nothing back in promising that these new agents will “unlock exponential value across [a customer’s] entire organization.” Workday is emphasizing the end-to-end potential of these new agents, which is a critical capability for customers in the emerging AI Revolution. From the Workday announcement:
The agents, powered by Workday Illuminate, represent the next stage of enterprise AI – propelling the industry from disparate AI features to end-to-end business process transformation. The agents revealed today are the first of many to come from Workday as the company seeks to radically simplify business processes for end users and elevate humans at work.
“The potential for AI to revolutionize the way we work is undeniable, but for many companies, the path to significant impact has been elusive,” said David Somers, chief product officer, Workday. “Workday Illuminate and our new AI agents are here to change that. By transforming end-to-end finance and HR business workflows, we’re empowering companies to unlock exponential value across their entire organization.”
Partnerships with Equifax and Salesforce: While there’s been significant coverage of the recent Workday-Salesforce agreement to allow customers to easily and securely manage and analyze data from both companies’ systems, I was also impressed by Workday striking a deal with Equifax to simplify and accelerate verification for employment and income for the employees of Workday’s customers. This is a great example of how customer-centric apps companies like Workday can greatly extend the value they drive for customers and the big marketplace opportunities the AI boom is creating.
Proposed Acquisition of Evisort: While Workday aggressively positions itself as a peerless provider of business insights for its customers, this planned acquisition of AI-native Evisort and its document-intelligence platform will bring new and expanded analytical capabilities into the fold. From the Workday press release: “More than 80% of business data is unstructured and organized in a way that’s not easy to search, analyze, or act upon. This includes data in contracts, invoices, and policy documents. With Evisort’s powerful AI capabilities, Workday will enable its customers to surface critical insights within this untapped data to make key business decisions and take action faster than ever before.”
Final Thought
Workday’s no stranger to competing against larger players — it’s been doing that since its founding almost two decades ago — and has consistently used advanced technology as a primary competitive weapon. But as the AI Revolution pushes the stakes to unprecedented heights, and as Workday nears the $10-billion mark, advanced technology alone is not enough.
So these new partnerships, new forays into new technologies, and a bold but highly rational M&A strategy are coming together to give Workday new reach, mass, and opportunity to continue being one of the world’s top applications, solutions, and platforms companies.
The AI Ecosystem Q2 2024 Report compiles the innovations, funding, and products highlighted in AI Ecosystem Reports from the second quarter of 2024. Download now for perspectives on the companies, innovations, and solutions shaping the future of AI.
