Workday Rising: Evolving the ‘agentic art of the possible’ for people & money 

Day zero keynotes

Workday held a number of “day zero” sessions for press and general attendees.

Jerry Ting, head of agentic AI at Workday, explained how Workday technology (he previously ran the now-acquired AI-driven contract management specialist Evisort) uses AI to break down employment contracts and uses agentic AI to deliver smart services.

Peter Bailis, chief technology officer at Workday, said that teams using the platform can now perform financial closes through agents, they can now do performance reviews through agents and – for users who don’t want to use Workday agents – there is also the option to build custom agents that an organisation might find they want to use in more niche ways.

In terms of agent stars now emerging from Workday… the company’s Employee Self-Service Agent ties all Workday agents together. The company built this technology with domain knowledge and context so it knows who each user is and is able to work out how to make each person’s role easier to perform.

BP Optimize Agent

The Workday Business Process (BP) Optimize Agent is offered here to streamline business processes in Workday. It identifies bottlenecks, inefficiencies and deviations from best practices. For example, it can flag and fix issues in the employee onboarding process, such as manual data entry or out-of-order steps.

“The Workday Business Process (BP) Optimize will look across all the business processes for every single user in a private way to identify where there are opportunities for efficiency,” said Bailis, speaking to press & analysts in a private media session. “Then, because we’ve taught this agent what best practices look like, it will actually provide recommendations.” 

Asked about what excites him most in terms of the application of agentic AI in HR and finance, Ting said that the company centralises all AI agent development within a person and their team. “I know a lot of different organisations work in different ways… some people have processes embedded into business units; so we need to think about centralised agent development and innovation… and how we finesse that sort of model at Workday,” said Ting.

Agentic art of the possible

The pair said that “this stuff is evolving so quickly”, not just in terms of how users experience AI at the front end of it, but the art of what’s possible from a foundational model perspective. 

“Six months ago, we went and told a customer that we can reduce some processes by 90%. They will say, okay, I kind of believe you [and that status has now progressed much further forward to belief]… a year ago, they might have said get out of my room, right? The very art of product management right now is agentic, so as we’re iterating, we’re learning… and we’re exploring – with a centralised approach to agentic AI for HR and finance stemming from our platform – what the art of the possible really means,” said Bailis.

“Peter uses the word platform,” said Ting. “That makes me really excited, because Workday touches people and money… and that’s a big part of how the client organisations we partner with work. [Part of this event is showing] how users can actually build agents on top of Workday. Well, that’s a new, bright future, right? Because then, the conversation is not just about logging into Workday, it’s about how we get Workday embedded into the daily actions of all users.”

Getting into the news announcements for Workday Rising 2025, the company announced Workday Build, a new developer platform that gives users the power to create, share and scale AI-powered services directly on Workday. 

Workday Build opens access to the company’s applications, data and AI in entirely new ways, allowing developers to customise Workday, extend its capabilities and deliver AI with the trust and security. 

Flowise Agent Builder, low-code tooling

Workday Build will also feature the new Workday Flowise Agent Builder, a low-code tool that allows users to build, deploy and manage custom AI agents within Workday. This will allow customers to use the data and context in Workday to create business-specific AI agents with speed, flexibility, and confidence. 

“The era of one-size-fits-all enterprise software is over,” said Bailis, chief technology officer, Workday. “With Workday Build, customers go from consuming AI to creating with it, giving them the power to build intelligent solutions directly on their most trusted people and financial data. This transforms how they do work, within the security of the Workday platform they already depend on.” 

Announced at Workday DevCon 2025, Workday’s new AI developer toolset brought Workday Illuminate to developers, enabling them to customise and connect AI apps and agents on the Workday platform. 

Workday Build is said to unify tools and programs into a single developer platform that includes: 

Workday Flowise Agent Builder is a low-code tool that enables developers to design, deploy and manage AI agents directly within Workday – from simple conversational experiences to complex workflows. Built on Workday’s people and financial data, these agents are secure, context-aware and enterprise-ready.

Gen AI-powered Developer Copilot 

New AI developer products and tools feature a unified set of tools to build apps, agents and orchestrations on the Workday platform, including a gen AI-powered Developer Copilot to turbocharge productivity, and Agent Gateway, which uses MCP- compliant APIs to connect AI agents with Workday’s Agent System of Record. 

“Workday Data Cloud offers zero-copy access to make it easier for users to connect HR and finance data to their favourite enterprise data platforms. By unlocking trusted data where it already resides, organisations can generate deeper insights and power more intelligent, context-rich solutions. Workday Marketplace and Partner Programs offer an expanded ecosystem of vetted, purpose-built solutions from Workday and partners – including those built with partner programs like Built on Workday, Workday Wellness, Global Payroll Connect, and Workday Agent Partner Network – designed to address industry, geography, and category-specific needs,” stated the company.

Workday says it fosters a global network where developers can learn, earn certifications, and connect with the Workday ecosystem – expanding the pool of certified talent and accelerating innovation across industries. 

The Workday of tomorrow?

The Workday of today, well, really the Workday of our immediate tomorrow (starting now) is not the HR and finance platform that was the company we knew before the predictive, generative and agentic age of today… Workday now describes itself as the platform for “people, money & agents” and the organisation clearly has ambitions designed to drive it into other areas of business (perhaps more ERP functions, maybe some additional CRM, or enterprise asset management or other) in the days and weeks ahead.