Workday expands Illuminate, introduces Workday Data Cloud

Workday Rising 2025 was busy for product announcements.

The company (which now defines itself as the enterprise AI platform for managing people, money and agents) announced new Workday Illuminate agents for HR, finance and industry.

What is Workday Illuminate?

To recap here, Workday Illuminate is a platform-level collection of specialised AI agents designed for specific tasks, such as expense reporting, a succession agent (for talent development) and the optimise agent (for streamlining workflows) that are all designed to provide a streamlined personalised user experience with predictive suggestions and natural-language interactions.

“Unlike piecemeal AI deployments, Workday Illuminate embeds AI directly into the natural flow of work within the Workday platform, making it context-aware and accessible when and where it’s needed most,” states the company… and the technology itself is powered by Workday’s dataset of transactions and user information.

New agents are now embedded in HR and finance to take on some of the most complex work processes. This includes actions like performance reviews, workforce planning and “financial close” functions.

“AI spending has skyrocketed, but most companies aren’t seeing real value. Deployments are too often piecemeal, siloed and disconnected from the way work actually gets done. An MIT study found that despite billions spent on AI last year, only 5% of organisations saw a return. Workday’s new Illuminate agents change that, embedding AI directly into workflows and transforming processes to deliver real business results,” stated the company.

Beyond random acts of automation

Gerrit Kazmaier, president, product & technology, Workday says that too many AI efforts amount to random acts of automation that never scale or deliver real value. He thinks that the barrier of self-building AI on legacy systems and closed platforms is simply too high.

“Workday Illuminate is different. With purpose-built AI agents and a single, open enterprise platform, we’re redefining ERP for the AI era – transforming it from a passive system of record into a system of action that drives real outcomes,” said Kazmaier. “Workday can pinpoint the moments that matter most and apply AI where it delivers the greatest impact. Illuminate agents transform processes like hiring, performance, planning and financial close into more efficient, strategic outcomes. Designed to work alongside people, these agents handle repetitive, time-consuming tasks so employees can focus on higher-value work.”

Over time, these agents learn and adapt – becoming smarter, more valuable partners across the business.

New Illuminate for HR Agents include

Business Process Copilot Agent: Automates the implementation, configuration and setup of new business processes to reduce manual effort.
Case Agent – Automates administrative tasks to help reduce resolution times.
Document Intelligence for Contingent Labour Agent – Accelerates SOW creation, tracks obligations and promotes alignment across contracts.
Employee Sentiment Agent – Helps people leaders by continuously analysing employee feedback.
Job Architecture Agent – Automates the creation and management of job ladders to drive alignment and agility.
Performance Agent – Analyses performance data from various enterprise applications to streamline reviews and recommend actions.
Cost & profitability Agent – Simplifies cost and profitability setup by allowing users to define allocation rules and drivers using natural language.
Financial Close Agent – Streamlines the financial close process with automation.
Financial Test Agent – Continuously tests financials to help detect fraud and enable compliance.

Plus also… Academic Requirements Agent (automates the creation of academic requirements for institutions); Student Administration Agent (automates repetitive administrative student tasks); Contract Intelligence Agent; and Frontline Agent, which cuts time spent on managing staffing changes; Financial Audit Agent; Payroll Agent and Recruiter Agent and Talent Mobility Agent.

Workday Data Cloud

The company also launched Workday Data Cloud, a new data layer that will help organisations unlock the strategic value of their HR and finance data by connecting it to their existing analytics platforms and operational systems. Customers will get what the company promises are rich, secure, real-time access to insights – turning workforce and financial information into action faster than ever.

Workday also announced that it is partnering with Snowflake, Databricks and Salesforce to give customers direct, zero-copy access to their core HR and finance data within the platforms they already use and bring that customer and business data into Workday with the same zero-copy approach. This (says Workday) will eliminate the need for costly data exports, bulky reports and stale duplicates – just clean, governed data at work. For example, a retailer could combine Workday data on employee engagement with Snowflake data on store performance to help them understand which teams are driving the most sales.

Finance teams will be able to unify Workday’s financial data with market, risk, or sales data in Databricks to power real-time forecasting and scenario planning. Additionally, HR leaders will be able to enrich retention and performance insights from Workday with product sales data, sales team KPIs like sales quota attainment, or operational metrics like case resolution times from Salesforce – enabling real-time employee insight linked to business outcomes.

Trusted, governed, current data

This will help data teams build more accurate predictive models and automate information across departments using trusted, governed and current data at the core.

“The era of one-size-fits-all enterprise software is over,” said Peter Bailis, CTO, 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.”

Workday Data Cloud will provide a set of capabilities that enable organisations to securely connect and analyse HR and finance data in context with customer, market and operational data. Together, these features will help ensure leaders have timely, governed insights to guide decision-making and accelerate AI innovation.

Workday Data Connect: Will enable two-way, zero-copy data sharing between Workday and leading data platforms like Snowflake, Databricks and Salesforce Data Cloud through a new Apache Iceberg connection. This will allow HR and finance data to be accessed in external platforms while bringing customer and market data into Workday, without duplication or complex integrations.

Workday Live Data Query: Will provide direct SQL access to Workday’s core business data, allowing customers to access the data they need in minutes, not months. This will accelerate advanced analytics, support AI model development and enable faster business insights. For example, a finance professional will be able to get an up-to-the-minute view of budget vs. actual spend to accelerate the financial close process.

Workday Prism: Will extend Workday’s data integration and transformation capabilities to support inbound zero-copy queries from external platforms. This will allow finance teams to enrich Workday financial data with market information in Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud or Databricks, HR teams to connect performance data with customer outcomes from Salesforce Data Cloud, all while maintaining Workday’s governance and security standards. Comments from Workday Data Cloud Partners

“The partnership between Snowflake and Workday is a major step forward in how companies can leverage their most valuable asset: their data,” said Christian Kleinerman, executive vice president of product, Snowflake.

Kleinerman says that by eliminating the friction of data silos, his team is making it possible for customers to accelerate their AI innovation and achieve a faster return on investment.

Workday Data Cloud will be available to early adopter customers in the first half of 2026 and generally available later that year.

Gerrit Kazmaier, president, product & technology, Workday.

Billy Idol (BI) vs. AI… Aneel Bhusri, co-founder and executive chair at Workday, hosted a BI vs AI faceoff with none other than Billy Idol.