Name: Transforming Work With Agentic AI
Uploaded: 2025-12-16T10:36:04.090Z
Duration: 20 min 8 s
Description: Transforming Work With Agentic AI

Transcript for "Transforming Work With Agentic AI": Welcome to Workday Rising EMEA twenty twenty five. We're coming to you live from inside the Fira Barcelona just off the Expo Floor. It's so wonderful to be here with all of you in beautiful Barcelona for workday rising twenty twenty five. More than 6,000 strong, making this the largest EMEA rising conference ever. Give yourself a warm round of applause for setting the record. Thank you. What Noah? What Noah? Come on, Catherine. Give it a bit more. Come on, Richard. Work it. Oh, that's great. Yeah. You could be a a mother. Thank you for being part of this amazing community. See you soon. Thank you. Hello, and welcome to our Europe, Middle East, and Africa community. We are delighted to be here with you today to bring rising to you right from our studio here in London. I know. It's so great to connect with you all. And, you know, Rogerio, looking back at that video, it's just a reminder just how fantastic Workday Rising in Me actually was in that beautiful city of Barcelona, wasn't it? I know. And I'm already missing it so much, Caroline. I I guess I can't wait for the next Rising next year, and I'm sure that our audience will agree with us. So it's a fantastic event. Right? I agree. Yep. We welcome 6,000 in person attendees representing 70 countries and more than 280 breakout sessions. It truly was a blend of innovation, excitement, fantastic conversations that happened there. And today, we're thrilled to share all of that goodness from Barcelona with you. Oh, we certainly are. And over the next fifteen minutes, we'll share with you some of the highlights from our rising EMEA innovation keynote that show how we're building the enterprise AI platform for managing your people, your money, and your agents. And immediately after that, we're launching a series of deep dive breakout videos giving you even more insight into our newest innovation. This is such an exciting time for our amazing Workday community here in EMEA. And today, we have more than 2,300 customers headquartered right here in this region who place their trust in us as we continue to define the new workday together. A new workday that is AI powered, human centric, and future ready. Did you say 2,300 customers have bought it here? I know. I know. That's a lot of customers. It's incredible, the growth. That's amazing and and we're here at a pivotal moment. The rapid acceleration of AI redefines how people work and is set to drive unprecedented economic growth. And for Workday, AI transformation is, above all, human centered. We're building it to amplify human performance and help organizations thrive in today's fast moving and fast changing environments. Caroline, should we dive in? Let's do it, Rogelio. So while AI is clearly top of mind for so many, we have to be honest about where the market is today. We are an inflection point with regards to AI. So on the one hand, it gives us a massive opportunity to fundamentally transform how work gets done. But for most companies across the globe, this radical transformation remains just a vision. So look at the figures organizations have already shelled out, billions on AI, and yet the return on investment simply isn't there yet. A recent report from McKinsey put it quite clearly that 80% of companies are now using the latest generation of AI, but a staggering 80% have also not seen significant returns. So the big question is why? It's because AI is fragmented. You've got closed platforms, complex integrations, and frankly, a poor user experience. And those are the very problems that we at Workday are set out to solve. That's right. And we're leading the charge because we really believe there's a better way, a way where AI is the solution and not the problem. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for managing people, money, and agents. And we're bringing this new world to life for you in four key ways. One, we're building the new front door for work. Two, we're building the best AI agents for HR, finance, and planning. Three, we're accelerating our investments in our core. And four, we're building an open platform designed for work. Because it's time for the next generation of enterprise reimagined for the AI era, no longer a static system of record, but a true system of action and enterprise platform that understands your business, anticipates your needs, and helps you reimagine how work gets done. That's absolutely right, Rugerio. So how exactly do we deliver on this vision? Well, it all starts with one intelligent experience, which brings us to pillar one, the new front door for work. We believe that AI is here to create a better work experience for everyone who should understand how you work, help you work more efficiently, and be easy to adopt. We're already powering billions of workflows with AI to build intelligent experience, process automation, and assist workers every single day. And now with our acquisition of Sana, we're taking it to the next level. Workday is combining knowledge management and AI agents with all of the core business processes for HR and finance to completely change the way that you work. Sana is that critical piece that solves that fragmentation problem that we mentioned earlier. Now let's take a look at the moment that Joel Hellenmark, founder and CEO of Sana, introduced the new front door for work. However, inside organizations today, knowledge is scattered. It's stuck in hundreds of different enterprise tools or worse in people's heads. People waste time bouncing between dozens of different apps, spending hours searching, and still come up empty. And this isn't just killing productivity. This is stalling progress inside our organizations. And we think AI is, you know, a once once in a generation opportunity to change this. We can go from tools that find information, to AI that synthesizes all of your company's knowledge in a personalized learning experience. We can reduce 20 step tasks into a single tap doing hours of work in seconds. This is the new front door to work, where AI is the new UI. Fantastic stuff. Love pillar one, Sana, but a great experience must be powered by great intelligence. Our second pillar ensures that the engine inside Workday is the most powerful and trusted in the enterprise. This is pillar two, the best AI agents for HR, finance, and planning. Workday AI is not generic. It's purpose built for the unique demands of HR and finance processes, powered by twenty plus years of trusted business data with over 70,000,000 employee records and a trillion transactions per year and integrated right into the flow of work. And just as importantly, we built all of this responsibly aligned with the principles of the EU AI act. That deep knowledge is why our AI is so accurate and understands your business completely. It means that you can use our agents and see value from the very first day. So last year, we unveiled our first wave of Workday AI agents And earlier this year, we made an additional nine agents available to early adopters. And customers are already experiencing tremendous value from these agents. As Gerrit Kazmaier, our President of Product and Technology showed, we're just getting started. Today, here in Barcelona, I'm excited to announce our next wave of illuminate AI agents. And our new agents, they are taking on some of the most complex hard processes in HR and finance They help you work smarter, faster, and with greater confidence. Here are just three examples. Employee service delivery. That is incredibly important. Right? Our new case agent automatically reviews HR cases. It applies the right compliance context, and it drafts a tailored response. That means not only is the employee experience better, but it also lowers the number of support requests. And here's the really cool thing about it. The manual work, it disappears. And the most important part, caring for the human, stays with people. Our new performance agent, and I know this is a tough topic, but we're gonna help with that, draws on data across Workday and other systems like Salesforce to give managers a comprehensive data driven, fact based set of feedback items. So now managers can focus on really meaningful conversations, and build a performance culture that really powers the business. And last, but not least, closing the books. Usually, that's a very high pressure sprint. Any of you done that? Chasing anomalies, reconciling accounts, bringing it all together at the very last minute. Sounds familiar? I have been in that hot mess. No fun. Our financial close agent helps streamline this entire process. It coordinates all the close tasks across your teams. It flex issues in real time, and it brings everything back together. Now your financial flows, it becomes more predictable, it becomes more efficient, but most importantly, it becomes much lower risk. We've just shown you the first two pillars of how we're building the next generation enterprise, the new front door for work and the best AI agents built right into the flow of your work. And at the heart of that is the foundation that we've built together, helping you manage your people and your money on one single platform, which brings us now to pillar three, accelerating our investments in the core because we're doubling down on what we do best, delivering the most comprehensive and intelligent HR and finance suite in the industry. Now we've covered various innovations in the core at Rising, but I wanted to take a moment to hone in just a couple of key areas particularly relevant for European organizations because we know that global compliance is of the utmost importance and many of you are preparing to meet the requirements of the EU pay transparency directive which will go live in June 2026. So I'm delighted to say we are ready to support you with our new pay transparency analyzer powered by Kynos. This is your single, secure, and trusted source for global pay transparency, and it will help you identify, analyze, and close pay gaps, and it manages key EU requirements such as the right to information so that you can confidently manage compliance and promote fair and clear pay practices. And if you're keen to know more, go on to our website where we have loads of information, or if easier, just ring up your Workday account representative directly. So next up, we also understand that when you're growing globally, nothing is a bigger challenge than cross border payroll. We absolutely understand the complexity of operating in multiple countries and we're investing in a payroll strategy to meet your diverse needs. This includes, number one, global payroll connect so that you can easily set up your own integrations with a network of trusted payroll providers. Number two, a brand new Workday goal managed payroll offering for our midsize Workday customers, which you'll hear all about in just a minute. And lastly, the ability for our partners to localize Workday payroll, where we're combining Workday's payroll engine with the local expertise of our partners to deliver compliance, country specific payrolls, all centralized inside Workday. Ultimately, this entire foundation gives you unmatched agility and a significant market advantage. It's business transformation at the highest level of how you plan, hire staff, pay, and close. So end to end all in one platform with AI right at the core. Now let's move to our fourth and final strategic pillar, an open platform designed for work. In a truly AI powered world, we need to unlock AI across the entire enterprise. It's about enabling agents to work across all of your systems, which requires unprecedented levels of connectivity. So let's watch that moment back where Gerrit shared Workday's intent to acquire Pipe Dream. And this is why we are taking connectivity to an entirely new level. I'm thrilled to announce that Workday has signed a definite agreement to acquire Pipedream. Pipedream is a low code, no code integration platform for AI agents. It has more than 3,000 connectors. They're all secure and prebuilt. These connectors link the world's most widely used business applications together. With pipe dreams, your agents can seamlessly connect with thousands of applications outside of Workday. Doesn't that sound amazing? Now for everyone here in Europe, we know that innovating with AI comes with a unique challenge, and that's your data. Absolutely no region in the world has higher expectations for data protection and digital sovereignty. So the question for us all is crystal clear. How do you embrace AI and scale innovation without compromising sovereignty, security, or control of your data? The answer, simply put, is the Workday EU sovereign cloud. It's designed to turn Europe's digital sovereignty requirements into strategic advantage, giving you three key things. First, the confidence to adopt AI at speed with the highest levels of trust, security, and compliance built in. Secondly, resilient EU based operations keeping critical parts of your business running. Things like payroll, HR, finance, and of course planning. And thirdly, data protection that you can absolutely rely on with your data staying under EU jurisdiction and operated by people right here in Europe. This is how we deliver the future of work in Europe, providing you with the trust, control, and confidence that you need to innovate. But our open platform goes beyond just sovereignty. That's right, Ruggerio. It does. And we've now made it incredibly simple for any company, any department, or any employee to build on Workday and connect with that broader AI ecosystem. And that, of course, is realized through Workday Build, our new developer platform and community. Workday Build includes brilliant innovations like extend, orchestrate, developer copilot, Flowwise agent builder, and, crucially, our new Workday data cloud designed to unlock your enterprise data for AI. We're also adding hundreds of new MCP enabled APIs to power agentic interactions. And finally, the icing on the cake, if you will, we also announced the expansion of Workday goal, making all of this innovation and power accessible for customers of all sizes. So let's take a look at what that means, shall we? I'm thrilled to announce the expansion of Workday Go. Now, we are making it easier than ever to get started with Workday and to help every company in the world to operate with global scale, simplicity, and tap into the global talent pool. And we're doing this in three new ways. First, what if you could hire without having to consider the complexity of local payroll rules or even entity creation, especially in Europe? Doing business means you're going across borders by definition. This is why I am so incredibly announced, so excited to announce our brand new Workday Go global payroll. We are expanding Workday Go through our Workday Go partner network, which simplifies how companies can work with Workday. We are making it truly easy for Workday Go customers to access benefits, payments, and give you more deployment choices. We are so excited to launch alongside our partners, like Benefit Harbor, OneSource Virtual, Remote, Top Lock, and Kainos. And third, personally, I say, technology person, I must say, maybe the most exciting part here. Rope de goo will make your deployments faster and easier with a new deployment agent to help you go live and realize value quicker. We are standing together at the gates of a new era, powered by our vision to bring the value of AI to the enterprise through the most complete HR and finance suite built on an open platform. For two decades, we've been your trusted partner and frankly, as we embark on this next great transformation, we could not be more excited to be taking that vital step forward together. That's a wrap on our big announcements from Rising EMEA. Carolyn and I are delighted that you could join us today. Yeah. We certainly are and we know that you're eager for more, so stick around.