New capabilities powered by Workday Illuminate™ will provide a centralised system for managing an organisation’s entire fleet of AI agents, from Workday and third parties alike. Workday is leveraging its 20 years of leadership in human capital management to empower organisations to thrive in the world of agentic AI and manage the changing workforce. Workday announces new role-based Illuminate agents for payroll, contracts, financial auditing and policy. Companies will be able to discover and deploy AI agents from Workday, customers and partners through Workday Marketplace.
Workday, Inc., the AI platform for managing people and money, announced the Workday Agent System of Record to help organisations manage their entire fleet of AI agents – from Workday and third-parties alike – in one place. The Agent System of Record will enable businesses to thrive in the age of agentic AI by providing the essential tools to help effectively govern, manage and optimise their digital workforce.
As the number and complexity of AI agents grow, organisations of all sizes face a new set of challenges: managing their deployment, ensuring their security and compliance, optimising their impact, and managing costs. Without a centralised approach, they risk fragmented operations, increased security risk and difficulty measuring the true value of their AI investments.
The Agent System of Record will provide an efficient, secure way to onboard new AI agents, define their roles and responsibilities, track their impact, budget and forecast their costs, support compliance and foster continuous improvement. By providing a single system for managing AI agents being used across a company’s workforce, Workday will give IT and business leaders transparency and control over the impact of AI agents on work.
“The workforce of the future will include both humans and AI agents, and businesses that don’t learn to manage this incredibly complex reality will fall quickly behind,” said Aneel Bhusri, co-founder and executive chair, Workday. “We believe no company in the world is better positioned than Workday to usher in this new era of workforce management in a trusted, ethical way. Our deep understanding of human skills and roles naturally extends to managing digital labour. The future is here, and just like with the transition to the cloud, we’re ready to help our customers get there first.”
“At Workday, we believe that humans and agents should peacefully coexist in a way that amplifies human performance,” said Carl Eschenbach, CEO, Workday. “As the system of record for more than 10,500 organisations around the world, there is no one better than Workday to manage every part of the workforce – employees, contingent workers and agents – on our trusted platform.”
Unlock the Full Potential of AI Agents
With decades of experience in handling sensitive data and managing complex workforce processes, Workday is a recognised leader in responsible AI development. With the Agent System of Record, organisations will be able to leverage the best AI agents for their needs—whether they’re from Workday, Workday customers or partners— while maintaining centralised control, governance and visibility.
Key benefits of the Agent System of Record include:
● Centralised Management: Manage all AI agents within a single system to gain transparency into their impact and effectiveness.
● Streamlined Agent Onboarding: Quickly onboard new agents with defined roles, skills and secure access to relevant data, accelerating time to value.
● Managing and Optimising Costs: Budget, forecast and optimise the ROI of AI agents to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in delivering business outcomes.
● Support Secure and Compliant Deployment: Deploy agents with confidence, leveraging automated configuration, access controls and policy enforcement to mitigate risk.
● Real-Time Operational Visibility: Monitor agent activity, enforce policies and track costs in real time to optimise performance and ROI. Maintain continuous agent oversight with real-time identity verification, agent orchestration and financial cost monitoring for optimal performance.
New Role-Based Agents Transform Entire Business Processes
Workday also announced new role-based AI agents that customers will be able to easily deploy and manage through the Agent System of Record. While most agents in the market today are task-based and follow specific step-by-step instructions, Workday’s role-based agents contain a configurable set of ‘skills’ that give them more autonomy and the ability to more fully support people in their roles. The agents can perform hundreds of individual tasks. Workday’s previously announced role-based agents including Recruiting, Talent Mobility, Succession and Optimise Agents. New Workday agents announced include:
● Contracts Agent: Continuously analyses contracts across the enterprise, surfaces obligations and opportunities buried in unstructured data, and drives business actions to capture value and mitigate risk.
● Payroll Agent: Identifies and updates invalid payroll data. Automates audit workflows, surfaces insights and recommends fixes. Monitors compliance and delivers system updates.
● Financial Auditing Agent: Increases efficiency and mitigates risk during the audit experience by connecting complex business documents to monitor transactions, reconcile balances and review internal controls. Allows audit firms to develop apps that connect directly to their Workday customers.
● Policy Agent: Continuously reads a company’s latest corporate policy details, then seamlessly and proactively sends that information to employees and managers wherever they are asking questions or doing work. Delivers a simplified self-service user experience, more compliant transactions and deflection of tactical case volume, allowing the HR help desk to focus on more complex cases.
Discover and Deploy Industry-Leading AI Agents Through Workday Marketplace
AI Agents from Workday and Workday partners will be featured in Workday Marketplace, making it easy for customers to discover and deploy agents that meet their business needs. In the future, customers and partners will also be able to augment, customise and complement AI agents that integrate seamlessly with Workday through Workday’s developer platform, Workday Extend.
The Workday Agent System of Record and new role-based AI agents are currently in development and are expected to become available later this year.
Support for the Workday Agent System of Record
“More and more business leaders are deploying agents in their organisations and considering how digital labour can help them scale,” said Adam Evans, EVP and GM, Salesforce AI. “Workday is making it easy to incorporate and manage AI agents right alongside human workforces to augment employee bases with always-on digital labour. Last year, Salesforce and Workday partnered to develop agents for employee service use cases and soon, Agentforce agents will be available on the Workday Marketplace to even more HR and finance professionals who use Workday to manage their human and now agentic workforces. We look forward to continuing to innovate together and empowering more businesses with digital labour.”
“AWS is powering the future of AI agent development through Amazon Bedrock’s comprehensive foundation model ecosystem and enterprise-grade development framework,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Data and AI, AWS. “With Workday’s Agent System of Record, organisations will be much better positioned to ethically manage all these agents. We’re excited to collaborate with Workday to reshape the future of work through agentic AI. Together, we’ll empower organisations to unlock exponential value while maintaining our shared commitment to security and responsible AI.”
“The rise of AI agents in the enterprise has created an urgent need for a centralised system of record to manage and govern this increasingly complex landscape,” said R “Ray” Wang, CEO and Principal Analyst of Constellation Research. “Most of the executives we’ve spoken with seek solutions that provide the tools they need to harness the power of AI while maintaining security, compliance and control. Digital workforce management capabilities will be a significant step forward for the industry.”
“The Workday Agent System of Record is a game-changer for enterprise AI adoption,” said Winston Weinberg, CEO & Co-Founder, Harvey. “By centrally managing agents and ensuring they adhere to the same strict access controls and compliance standards as human employees, Workday is building the foundation for a truly trusted and secure AI-powered workforce. This is paramount for widespread enterprise adoption.”
“At Team Car Care, we’ve already experienced firsthand the power of Workday’s AI capabilities, which are making a real impact on our bottom line,” said Matt Castonguay, CFO, Team Car Care. “That’s why we’re so excited about the Workday Agent System of Record. As we continue to explore the potential of AI, having a comprehensive platform like this will be critical.”
“Digital colleagues or AI agents, will become an increasingly common addition to the workforce, and Workday’s Agent System of Record is well positioned to help organisations meet the moment of monumental change,” said Steve Chase, Vice Chair of AI and Digital Innovation, KPMG LLP. “We’re thrilled to collaborate with Workday to help our shared clients manage the new digital workforce with confidence just as they do full-time employees and contractors.”
