Workday's AI vision goes beyond automation

Workday CFO Zane Rowe says AI's promise is giving employees freedom to rethink how they work, uncover insights, and add more value to the business.

Testing AI agents internally

Rowe reviewed a list of ten AI agents being developed by Workday's tax team to improve how employees work. Not every agent will make the cut.

Two major opportunities for AI

Workday sees improving business insights and redesigning processes from end to end as the main ways AI can add value to finance operations.

Decision Intelligence expands across products

Workday is expanding Decision Intelligence beyond Adaptive to HR and finance. The tool helps teams understand what drives business performance and test scenarios.

New autopilot agents and partnerships

At its Rising event, Workday announced autopilot agents for accounting, payroll, and hiring, an expanded Trusted Agent Platform, and a partnership with Anthropic.

Rowe redefines AI success beyond ROI

Rowe says measuring AI is more than ROI. Success means better work, stronger decisions, greater organizational capacity, and improved customer value.

“I always hear people talk about ROI, and I think it's so much more than that.”

Output alone doesn't make business better

AI might enable a finance team to generate twice as many reports, but that alone doesn't necessarily make the business better, Rowe explained.

The real measure: insights and engagement

A more meaningful measure is whether teams can use AI to uncover insights, anticipate problems, advise leaders, and improve decisions while staying motivated.

“It's not just about finding efficiencies. It's about people actually doing the work that they thought they were going to do when they signed up to join a company.”