Name: Workday GO webinar
Uploaded: 2025-10-09T04:16:10.042Z
Duration: 1 h 8 s
Description: Workday GO webinar

Transcript for "Workday GO webinar": This is rock stars being corporate types. Workday's AI agents are making you all rock stars. Sorry. Habit. Proceed. So that's a slide. Any questions? And now with Workday, we can manage our people and AI agents. I'm sorry. Who are they? Oh, interns. We're interns. Good night. I'll see you tomorrow. Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining us. We are broadcasting across Asia Pacific, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan. So good morning, good afternoon, or evening wherever you're joining us from. My name is, Chetan Jotwani, principal value manager at Workday based in Singapore. And I have the pleasure of being the host for you today with a very exciting lineup of speakers, so let's get to know them. I'm delighted to welcome, first up, Supriya Deika, research manager for APAC SMB segment from IDC, and Matt McManus, CFO for services at Kainos, along with Will Aubrey Jones, vice president of APAC at Kainos. So we will focus this session on a key critical question facing every ambitious SME leader in the region. We are in the landscape of rising costs, trade uncertainty, and fierce competition. And so as leaders of your businesses, you're probably wondering how you can move your business from beyond survival to scale and truly thrive in your existing markets and also grow across borders. Today, we'll be addressing what IDC has identified as the number one challenge for 34% of organizations looking to expand overseas, which is around managing compliance and regulatory risks. And later, we will hear from our panel from KNOs about their experience of managing these challenges as they have now grown to become a global business, including right here in Asia Pacific. So with that, let me invite Supriya to share with us, on the findings from ITC from their research in the, SMB segment in APAC. Supriya, over to you. Thank you, Chetan, for the warm welcome. Hello, everyone. So imagine this. You are running a fast growing business in Asia Pacific. You have found a product market fit. Revenues are up, and now your leadership team is talking about expansion. New markets, new talent pools, and new customers. But as you start planning, cracks begin to show. Payroll in one country doesn't match the tax rules in another. Finance needs weeks of consolidation of reports. HR can't see workforce data in real time. And just when you think you have solved one issue, a new regulation or supply chain shock hits. This is the reality for many businesses in our region. And today, I want to walk you through this journey, what opportunities Asia Pacific holds, what challenges leaders like you face, and what it takes to overcome them. As we look across Asia Pacific, mid market businesses face a combination of familiar and new challenges. Some of these are internal, like fragmented HR and finance systems, legacy technology slowing decisions, or the struggle to retain talent. Others are external, like regulatory complexity that differs from country to country. For example, the personal data protection act getting stringent in Singapore and the rules on privacy and cyber security under the consumer data right in Australia, or geopolitical disruptions like trade tar tariffs that ripple through supply chains. In fact, IDC research also shows that about a third of businesses report workforce reductions, and more than one in five are seeing customer satisfaction drop as they struggle to keep pace. So while the ambition to grow is there, the path is full of roadblocks. And while we may have challenges in Asia Pacific, it provides a lot of opportunities as well. On one side, you have the emerging markets like ASEAN countries full of cost effective options, digital first talent, and evolving regulations. On the other hand, the mature markets like Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan, These are highly digital, automation ready, but with complex compliance expectations. And for a growing company, this can be both exciting and daunting. The opportunities are endless, but every border you cross adds another layer of complexity. And the question is, how do you scale across this puzzle without losing your agility? Here's where many organizations stumble. They try to scale global ambition on legacy local systems. IDC research also highlights over 85% of businesses still operating with more than 10% of their backing systems on legacy on prem infrastructure and the result costs rise, decision slows and leadership spends more time firefighting than innovating. For example, finance ends up juggling between spreadsheets which delays reporting. HR keeps spending weeks on localizing processes and as a result compliance becomes reactive instead of proactive. So now let's imagine a different scenario. Instead of patching these systems together, you build a unified foundation for finance and HR. One that's cloud based, intelligent, and designed to scale. And with this foundation, you have four things that can be made possible. First, a cloud native base means you can deploy quickly and scale up as your business grows without months of delay. Secondly, embedded AI and automation can take away manual bottlenecks, letting your teams focus on decisions and not data entry. Third, finance and HR workflows are unified giving leaders an end to end visibility and efficiency instead of working in silos. And finally, multi country readiness. You can adapt faster to different regulatory environments, localize your processes more easily, and reduce compliance risks. This is what sets growing companies apart. They start building on a digital foundation that's built to scale across borders and here's where agility becomes reality. So once you have laid that unified foundation, the question becomes how do you actually scale smarter? And this is where automation and AI really start to make a difference. In fact, 30% of companies in Asia Pacific are already planning to embed AI into their business applications. And what would that look like in a day to day operation of a business? In finance, routine tasks like invoicing, payroll, expense reporting, compliance checks, these are all automated. It can free up your time for higher value decision making. In HR, automation shortens the hiring cycles and strengthens retention by helping you identify risks earlier. Across businesses, AI can continuously monitor the regulatory changes, flag anomalies, and automate the compliance so you are not taken off guard. And when it comes to planning, predictive insights can help you anticipate workforce costs, attrition risks, and budget variances. Even multi currency reporting becomes seamless. Something very critical when you are operating in multiple markets. Correct? But none of this is possible without the right foundation in place. Let's think of it like building a house. You don't just, start with the windows or the paint. You start with the foundation. For businesses like yours looking to grow across Asia Pacific, the foundation becomes and it begins with four critical steps. First, consolidating the finance and HR system. When data leaves in silos, you don't get a clear picture of the business. Consolidation begins, brings unified insights that are essential for decision making. Second, embracing open APIs and prebuilt connectors. This ensures your systems don't just run efficiently today, but can also integrate and connect with the solutions that you will need tomorrow so your business grows. Now if you are still on prem, it will, of course, limit agility and innovation as these systems are less adaptable to new technologies and lack flexibility. So prioritize cloud native platforms. It will help you deploy faster. These require queues, fewer customizations. This came without any heavy burden of infrastructure costs. And finally, if you choose a cloud platform already or if you have a cloud platform already, you don't have to worry about AI. It comes embedded. This isn't about just chasing the trend. It's about enabling faster real time decision making that keeps you ahead of your competitors. And why it matters? Because with the right foundation, you break down silos, you scale with agility, and you ensure compliance across markets. So you can make better decisions. But technology alone cannot do this. It's about how leaders across finance, HR and IT can come together and make it real. So here are a few recommendations before I end my presentation today. If you are IT leader, your role is about enabling speed and resilience. That means leaning on pre built connectors and open APIs to accelerate deployments, ensuring your platforms are secure and cloud native and designing every system with scale and automation in mind. If you are a finance leader, you are in a position to drive intelligent growth. That means pushing for real time reporting across entities while using AI driven forecasting to spot risks and opportunities early, automating compliance and payroll so your team can shift focus towards profitability and strategy. And if you are an HR leader, your mission is to build a workforce that tries in constant change. That means reducing time to hire through automation, improving retention by anticipating attrition risks, and ensuring compliance and payroll and tax in every market you operate in. And by working together, you can shift the business from reacting to complexity to thriving in it. You are the ones who can take modernization out of those strategy decks and into day to day execution. So here's the story I want to leave you with. Asia Pacific offers incredible opportunities but also unparalleled complexities. Legacy systems can hold you back, but the unifying modern foundation in finance and HR can unlock agility and resilience. The companies that thrive in this region will be the ones that don't just expand faster but expand smarter with systems, leadership, and strategies that scale beyond borders. Thank you. Thanks so much, Supriya. Wow. I I think I heard you mentioned 85% of of these businesses are still working on legacy on premise systems. It's so interesting to see how, you know, these different functions within these organizations are then coming together to solve these challenges and capitalize on the opportunities that brings by laying the right foundation to close that technology gap. And then are also then able to leverage the magic and and benefits of AI to drive their businesses forward. And in our regions, especially in APAC, it's always interesting to see the differences in maturity across markets, which bring out, additional complexity. So thank you for your sharing. That was really insightful. Alright. Now we've gone from the research. Now let's bring it to the reality, and let's hear the the KNOZ story. I'll invite Matt and Will to to join us for a discussion to bring this to life with their experiences at KNOX. Now, perhaps, Matt, I'll I'll bring you in first. You know, KNOX is now a highly successful global digital technology company, with over 2,800 people globally. But the journey wasn't really a straight line as we know it. You know, we have done some work together previously to understand this art, and we see that after your IPO in 2015, you did adopt a new financial system that you, realized within the first twelve months that it wasn't really fit for purpose. Now looking back at that time, if you could take us back, to share what specific rigid problems were you and the business facing that made you realize that the system was hindering rather than helping Kynos' ability to scale? Thanks, Chetan. Yeah. It feels like a long time ago in in 2015. So back then, we had about 750, 800 folks, and the majority of those, colleagues were in The UK and Ireland and Poland, probably 95%. Our systems landscape was, probably not uncommon for that size of organization. So we had our HR information, and we had just moved to Workday, about two years earlier than that. But our financials was, for our first thirty years in business, was on a on premise a single ledger within. And as we grew into new territories and new countries, we had to actually deconsolidate, never mind consolidate. So that was a an interesting time for my finance colleagues back then. But as you already called out, we had made the move just prior to just prior to IPO. We had moved to a competing co cloud based product, and it it was absolutely fine. It got us through the IPO itself. We did our planning in Microsoft Excel, which is absolutely not uncommon for most organizations around the world. And then our PSA, tool, which is really the engine of our professional service business, we were using Kimbell at that point in time, which is now Contata. So four different, I guess, operating systems for to help us to run our business. And whilst our digital services business was primarily UK and Ireland focused and supported by colleagues in UK and Ireland and Poland. Our Workday partnership at that time was really gathering pace. So we had started with an ambition to be the leading UK and Ireland partner. We then wanted to be the leading EMEA and APAC partner, We were also growing into the Americas region. So that growth meant that we were likely to have, a growing geographic footprint. We were gonna need to have local presence in those in those territories, both through relocating our some of our key individuals and also hiring local talent. So acknowledging that growth strategy was going to have both, an organic element, but also most likely an acquisitive element. And we were very deliberate when it came to acquisitions that we had a clear strategy to integrate as quickly as possible. And and we felt in advance that systems are gonna be a key enabler to that. So that if you bring it back to that system point, we made a real key choice back then to think, okay. We're just committed to another cloud based financial system. But having all our finance and HR data on one platform was gonna be really integral to support our growth. So even before we had started to grow, geographically, we had a lot of what I've described as inefficiencies, having to reconcile our HR data and present Workday to our finance data. And, effectively, the finance team at that point in time was spending probably between, a third and a half of their time reconciling, which is not exactly where you wanna be as a as a listed company and hiring top talent and and asking them to come in and reconcile. And then processes like record the receipt or timesheet, processes were all hugely, hugely manual. Aside from the inefficiencies, that was really tying us up in the lack of insight to what really was needed to help drive the business. We find ourselves mainly as a as a compliance team as opposed to a real business partner, and that was something I, in my role at that time, really wanted to change. And then there were some more restrictive points, so things like creating new subsidiaries as we entered into these, new countries, I would describe as being pretty clunky. And then the the subsequent consolidation became harder and harder, more time consuming. And, we we like to describe ourselves as as being very innovative and and very agile. So some years, we would have maybe described their business in maybe three business units, and then as we invested in new product lines or new markets, we maybe have a fourth or fifth business unit. That sort of agility was was very hard to support from a systems point of view. We we find that having those disparate systems that weren't connected made it really tricky to actually, report information to the business as we would have hoped to. So quite a difficult point, in our business where finance was becoming, a bit of a blocker as opposed to really where I wanted to be, which was, supporting the business growth. Excellent. Thank you so much. I think, it's so interesting to hear, you know, these anecdotes, like, looking back as as to your growth story and then how I think to Supriya's point previously, how that technology platform being an enabler versus being a hindrance plays its part in also from your functional perspective as as the CFO, as well. Maybe, Supriya, I'll go back to you here. You know, you've started hundreds of companies across Asia Pacific. Does this story that, that Matt also alluded to of of a modern system proving too rigid for a growing business reflect what you've seen across the market? Or and, you know, do our company's thinking that, you know, having a system is no longer purely enough connecting back to to what, Matt has shared about KNOs as well? Absolutely. The story of a modern system proving two region for a growing business is indeed a very common reflection that we see across the Asia Pacific market. Many companies, they face similar pain points, where having just a system alone is no longer enough. For the short term, these businesses prioritize implementing systems to automate just routine tasks or improve operational efficiency and bring order to growing complexities. But as and when these businesses grow, this becomes bottlenecks because of the inflexible architecture, complex customization, poor integration capabilities, and the limited ability to even evolve with the business needs. So what businesses really need is a very strong unified core, that is designed to be adaptable and agile. So it doesn't just support businesses or support operations today, it scales with the business, integrates with the new tools, remains open to innovations like AI in the future. The strategic choice ensures they achieve the short term efficiency without compromising their ability to pivot, innovate, or integrate AI or any other new technologies in the future. Therefore, simply having a system is currently in today's scenario is insufficient. Businesses need solutions that are designed adapt to be adaptive, scalable, and user centric that can truly support the growth and the market dynamics. Companies are increasingly leveraging and seeking platforms, you know, that that are modern, modernized platforms to overcome the rigidity of the, legacy systems and achieve future ready agility. Excellent. Thank you, Supriya. And and maybe, Matt, I'll I'll come back to you here. And, again, I think going back to what Supriya just mentioned about evolving with the business needs. You mentioned that, you know, you chose to add, Workday Financials to your existing human capital management platform. I think you mentioned some of these things around, you know, transforming into a a true business partner. But bringing these two functions together, you know, what was, you know, some of the strategic thinking there, and what were some of the benefits that you've seen across the business even outside of your function for having that single source of information for both the finance and HR, especially as a professional services organization, Now in 15 offices globally. As a as a people business, at that point in time, we were predominantly a professional services business before our our product business had really had really taken off. Our operations are so dependent on our finance and HR data being in lockstep. I think, you know, with experience, the line between what HR is responsible for and what finance is responsible for is very, very dotted. And very few processes really do not require both teams to work hand in hand. It's such a it's such a gray area about where the roles and responsibilities start and finish. So I see that as a real positive. I think, if you're in an organization that has a good culture, both teams can work really collaborative collaboratively together. But I think systems really, really helps enable that. So maybe a a few real examples to bring it to life. So if we think of talent, so we wanna attract and retain the best talent. And when it comes to our geographic growth, staff mobility is a big part of that. So whether that can be actual physical staff mobility and we wanna be able to maybe relocate some of our key staff to our new emerging markets or our new emerging countries, having that financing hits our system allows us to really plan effectively. We we get to understand what the true cost of moving those people might be, how their cost might compare to local markets, And also not just the cost element of it that, you know, a finance professional would be interested in, but you have the people implications. Right? You know, the the career progression, the locals the local talent, the local local skills that might be needed, which might be different to the job they're doing today. So having that all worked in and and trusting the data and work there has been really, really important to us. Another aspect of talent really for us is that, particularly in that time when we were growing geographically, but also around the time of COVID, we wanted to effectively make most of our staff or all our staff global. So regardless of where you're based in the world, we want to be able to have that concept that any staff member from anywhere in the world can support any customer anywhere in the world. And that that was a really, really big thing for us. So naturally, systems are gonna be a big part of that in terms of enabling. And that remote working was, was was huge for us at that period of time, and I I dread to think that if we didn't have those systems in place before COVID really started to impact us as a business, I I tried to think of how slow we would have been in terms of responding to our customer needs. So that that's hugely important about myself working with my counterpart, my CHRO, and just really helping navigate the business through those sort of changing times. I And then another aspect of it is maybe just more strategic planning. So, if we're entering into new territories, do we wanna hire in those countries, or do we wanna have maybe, offshore, nearshore type, teams who can help support? So those sort of recruitment planning activities, which are, you know, big strategic decisions. You know, I have to work with my HR colleagues to make sure that we're really making the best decision for the for the company and also, ultimately, the customer needs in those in those territories. So that that's really important. As I said earlier, we we we tend to be agile in terms of our investment in new products. So today, we have a a a Workday products business that is contributing $100,000,000 of ARR. But, you know, eight, nine years ago, when we when we started this journey, we didn't know how that would evolve. So we were hiring different types of people that maybe we would have previously had in our organization. We needed to have a product mindset for that particular part of our business. And we also needed to think about how we, track, report, manage that business differently to how you would run a professional services business. And we we're able to run those two types of businesses all in the one common platform right through from HR, let's say business processes through the finance business processes, all seamlessly in one platform. And and my role as a as a CFO looking at all parts of the business, I get to have that commonality where I need it, but I then get to deep dive into the the various parts of the business with the KPIs to run. And then, you know, we've talked a little bit more about finance and and HR, but more recently, we've added the professional services, module onto Workday. So we're now effectively, full stack for running the business. And as a professional service organization, that really is the engine that drive your business. So that's everything from project insights, even more rich data in terms of, employee skills. And that that has really just lifted us to a a whole new level. So instead of having to worry about, creating a project and work down a project in Kimball, we're now everything's in one place. Everything right through from project or opportunity to the project, through the time sheets, through the revenue recognition, right, through the billing. That whole cycle is all on the one platform. And, you know, that's where we've really been able to, introduce the efficiencies. But it's not just about saving cost or saving money. It's about giving the information back to the business to help them run their business more efficiently, and that's really where the value comes from. Those are some great examples, man. I think, you know, in in my role, a lot of organizations come to us to talk about what is the business value of that transformation that they may be looking at. I think the you know, what what a lot of organizations might struggle with is they might think of things like efficiency, you know, comes fairly naturally to them when they go through a transformation like this. I think from the examples you shared, it talks so much about the strategic value of these to the business. You know, first up, you spoke about talent and and mobility. And not only does that encourage, you know, retention of critical talent within the organization for them to deliver more, but even knowledge within the organization to travel from one region to another as you've grown across markets, you know, it sounds like would be quite a a big benefit as well. And then secondly, you know, when uncertainties hit such as as we went through with COVID, you know, like you said, it's it's having that agile foundational platform really drives that business business forward and keeps you prepared for what you might not have anticipated. And I think, you know, moving forward, the things you you mentioned about strategic planning, and being a partner to the business, that's really where the the key transformational business value comes from. And so, you know, similar to to K NOS, we do see, a large number of our customers who started their Workday journey as they were a growing business. But then having scaled up to become, you know, global science, a lot of them sort of household names as well, which, you know, is that that critical point of helping these businesses understand that strategic case for change for this kind of a transformation. And this is what we're trying to advise them exactly to what you mentioned, Matt, of about having this all in one, system running these processes across functions within a single platform really drives that transformational value. And specifically, you know, to to the organizations who are entering into new markets across, APAC, Supriya spoke about the unique regulation and the maturity challenges across the across all different countries. The real world impact of having this, brings that control and brings that ability to be able to influence the business, in a positive way to drive that that transformation. And I think also, as Supriya mentioned previously, is the foundational, in technology platform with now built in AI drives the ability to do more, with less to make smarter, faster decisions and also mitigate risk. And also what we've seen, as well recently with our Workday Workday Go package solutions, they're really playing a role in helping these organizations to get up and running faster, adopt these solutions to sort of make it their own, and then scale up as they grow their their capabilities and their size to ensure that they're they're getting the biggest return from their crucial investments in technology, balancing their day to day cash flow versus the strategic transformation that they might need for the future. So no. Great great points, Matt. Thank you for sharing. As I move forward so, you know, everyone's, talking about automation and the future, of course, with with AI as well. I know, Matt, there's been, you know, a long journey. I think you've already mentioned a lot of these results. You know, we did have a joint study as well. You know, your story had some some really strong metric and tangible benefits for the business as well. For example, manually entering in entered invoices dropping from, you know, 50% to just 15%, running supplier payments from, you know, from days to just under thirty minutes. And I think we also looked at around, £95,000 in savings from process of automation. So from a a day to day work for your team, now you mentioned about the strategic elements that had an impact for day to day work for your team. You know, you mentioned about freeing up their time to to become more strategic partners to the business. How did it play out for, you know, from a day to day perspective for your team, you know, as a shift in their operations? Sure. So, some fond memories of when I joined KINOS in 2016. I'm gonna think of where we're at today. So I I recall payment runs, you know, used to literally land on your desk. And the the higher the the louder the buying meant the longer the payment run was gonna take to approve. So it it was despite being a list of PLC and all the regulations that you have to adhere to, we were we were pretty manual back then when I think about it. So when we introduced Workday Financials, you know, aside from the the business insight that we're trying to bring, automation or efficiencies was a was a key strategic objective. So let's take the p two p, example. So we were actually so excited by the potential of of the Workday finance platform that we made the strategic decision to consolidate our global banking, on the one global banking platform. So back then, we had maybe, a bank in Ireland, bank in The UK, bank in The States, bank in Poland, possibly I'm trying to think what countries back then. Maybe one more in another European country. So we actually did a an RFP and, picked a a bank that had, a a global network. So, of the the criteria that we used to assess those banks, integration to Workday was, I think, the the first or second most important criteria. So fast forward to today, we are now in, I think, 23 countries today, and all our banking operates through one integration from that bank to Workday. So So that's a two way integration. We have, we send secure payments to Workday, and we receive secure bank statements. So there's inefficiencies, but there's also a huge improvement in our our fraud and internal control, environment. So when I think of the the efficiencies introduced there, sending the secure payments, firstly, all the payment, approvals, the business process is all tracked in Workday. It's auditable. And we we are able to flex the, approval requirements depending on certain conditions, whether it's the size of the payment or not, the nature of the the payments themselves. Then we're also able to receive the secured bank payments or, sorry, bank statements, I should say, more quickly. There's no, ability so there's no room for error in terms of that integration. Actually so that integration went live in probably late twenty seventeen. And back then, we were actually using AI. I know it seems like a long time ago, but there was machine learning in the automatic bank reconciliation functionality. So whilst AI is is extremely popular today, it has been at the core of our processes and our efficiencies for probably seven, eight years now. And, you know, that has been a real enabler to those sort of stats that you called out about, about actual pounds and pence savings. So, we were able to back back then, we would have hired a placement machine from university each year, and they come in and they effectively work in the in the AP team. And now we hire the same placement student every year. Not the same one, but we hire one placement student every year, and they join our FP and A team to help actually, further their career and, support the business in terms of valuable activities. So that was a big part of it. One of the other efficiencies, we had outsourced our, effectively, our AMS for the the the other, finance system we're using. Now we are actually our our finance team, we're able to do the equivalent of, you know, sort of level one, level two tickets themselves whenever they want to, make changes to the workday, finance stack or introduce new features that come out, whether it's the the sort of weekly, upgrades or the the six monthly big, refreshes. We're able to upscale our own sort of training accountants or qualified accountants to do those testing, processes in the in the sandbox environment and make the configuration changes themselves. And that's allowed us to save a lot of money in terms of our source AMS function. So that's been hugely important. It gives us both surety about the the tenant we're using internally, but it also helps develop those skills of our internal finance folks. And and one start I'm I was always proud of was in the five years I led the finance team, about 25 people left finance to join other roles within Kainos. And those roles were either customer facing workday financials consultants, where they actually liked using the system so much that they then wanted to build a career being a a consultant, you know, delivering it for customers. Or they wanted to join our business operations teams, where they actually wanted to go and be part of the business, supporting the business. And the disciplines and the learnings they had from working in finance has really helped them actually be a business partner from within. So that that sort of experience they get working in finance and using Workday ultimately has helped further their career, and actually then contribute to Kinross' growth. So something I'm very proud of, but also it's a reflection on how Workday has just been such a a core part of our our growth journey over those years. Excellent. Yeah. I mean, some really great examples there. I know if if I was a early career person, I I'd definitely be happier in FPNA versus AP. So, and I think some of those anecdotes that you shared really, really great in terms of the capabilities of of the team there. Maybe, Supriya, I'll turn to you. I think, you know, Matt did share about AI being, you know, embedded as part of the platform, and and it's a trend now. But for for them, it was already part of the processes way back as as 2017. Your research shows that about 30% of APAC SMBs are looking to integrate AI. What are the the key use cases that you're seeing that they're exploring within the finance and and HR space when it comes to AI? The use cases, they differ based on where the businesses are currently in their digitalization journey mostly. So if you look at finance, commonly, the AI use cases include automating invoice processing just like Matt mentioned. Expense management is another area. There comes predictive analytics for cash flow and revenue forecasting and then anomaly detection as well. These AI application has actually helped these growing companies reduce manual workloads, enhance accuracy, and provide actionable insights for better financial decision making. Now if we talk about HR, companies are starting to realize the benefits of AI in HR, especially in terms of, routine HR document processing, cross handling, improving the talent acquisition with AI screening and recruitment tools, and enhancing the employee experience via AI powered chatbots, for FAQs and support. And, of course, predictive analytics to optimize the workforce planning and retention as well. So overall, AI adoption in these functions are helping SMBs and mid market companies streamline operations. They are not 100% there, but they have started to realize the value of AI and are looking into it, looking to deploy, these functions into their core operations. So in a way to streamline these operations, reduce cost, and scale more effectively as they grow their business within Asia Pacific or at a global level. And this reflects a regional trend as well where these AI enabled tools are actually becoming very integral to the growth and competitiveness in Asia Pacific. Excellent. Thanks thanks, Supriya. And I think I'm I'm hearing a common theme here as well in terms of what you shared and and Matt previously but AI really sort of augmenting the capability of the team that are there, helping them focus on, you know, things that are more value adding to the business. And I think for small enterprises as well, small medium enterprises, you know, there there might be some trepidation about how they start adopting AI. You know, they typically won't have a team of large data scientists, but that's where, you know, we've seen a lot of organizations that utilize Workday similar to what Matt shared. The AI already being part of the platform is is what helps them achieve these these outcomes. So it's it's already embedded as part of the process that they're doing and less as a as a bolt on, as an add on on top. So yeah. Thank you very much, Supriya. We'll we'll come to you towards the end just to, you know, talk about the Kinos story, which continues to evolve. I think we shared early on that Kinos is now scaling across, you know, globally, including the last twelve months in the Asia Pacific region as well. I think you mentioned previously when we we spoke is about growing from a handful of employees in Asia Pacific to now over 30. I was curious to to hear your perspective on, based on what Matt shared from from his, evidence as well, how has Workday really enabled you to grow at at such pace within the within this within this region as well? Yeah. Thanks, Justin. It's it's a great question. We should probably start by thanking Matt and the team for all the work they did all those years ago because I think what they did was establish a really strong foundation across the HR, finance, and and planning components of the business in order to enable us to to scale at that rate. But I'm sure that the challenges that we faced as we, you know, have initially scaled in the region are probably not uncommon to to any organization that's scaling at pace, which really is about ensuring you've got the correct level of capacity and and just importantly, the right capability to meet customer needs needs, sorry, but all of that whilst managing, obviously, the cost associated with that. So I think Matt's touched on a lot of really key areas with that. But if I focus specifically on our journey in APAC in the last twelve months, I'll really look at that linkage between the sales process through to headcount planning recruitment because, really, that's, you know, from a scaling perspective, what it's all been about. So if I think about the planning component of it, you know, Matt's already spoken a little bit about leveraging, adaptive planning, which we do. And so I think what's been really critical for us is having that fantastic insight into the ability to to really forecast capacity based on datasets coming out of both CRM, but also because we're leveraging Workday from PSA perspective, having that feed of existing employee sorry, existing customer data as well to feed into that. So what it really allows us to do is to effectively forecast plan and do that proactively on a really regular basis. You know? And when you're growing at, you know, several 100% as we have in the last twelve months from a headcount perspective, needing to do that regularly has been absolutely critical. So then if you take that sort of planning perspective, and then that in turn really has been enabling the talent acquisition team's working you know, been working with closely to effectively meet that plan and to meet that demand. So the more foresight we can give, the better outcomes we're gonna get. You know, the the one thing I'd like to think we've done is avoid any nasty surprises where we're tapping people on shoulder on a in shoulder on a Friday saying, look. We need people urgently. Don't get me wrong. It has happened at times. But with that foresight that we do get, that's really enabled us to to smooth through that process. And so I suppose that's what if I that's been sort of the strategic level leveraging planning and then, you know, feeding through from a talent acquisition perspective. Then if I move that down from the strategic level more to maybe the execution level of that, one of the key factors for us is, you know, being able to really source and attract. That's how to map talks about, you know, attracting and retaining top talent, and that's been absolutely critical for us in in our growth here. And Shabria talked earlier a little bit about, you know, the value of API connections and open APIs. I think a fantastic example of where we've been leveraging that in APAC in our growth has been quite a simple one, but through the seamless integration from the the creation of a job requisition in Workday, that flowing seamlessly through to the likes of LinkedIn and SEEK. Right? It's it's quite a simple thing on paper from a process perspective, but the value of that from, you know, managing the candidate process perspective have been invaluable. So I think that's a really good real life example there. And then that ultimately then feeding down from a candidate process perspective into the shortlisting and and assessment processes, which, again, we've touched a little bit on native AI capability. Again, this is an area where Workday's native AI has been absolutely invaluable, in accelerating that processes. Now I wanna be really clear. It's accelerated the process. It hasn't replaced the process. You know, we still do you know, still active part of that. But in terms of actually driving the efficiencies which we need as we're growing at scale, it's been absolutely invaluable. So if I look at, I suppose, the other linkage between sales process through headcount planning and through to to actively growing the team, the final point I'll make is a you know, sourcing, attracting top talent is one thing. You know, I believe we truly have done that at Kainos in the in the last twelve months, but the thing we then need to be ensuring we're doing is retaining. And Matt's talked about fantastic stories in terms of how some of his team have gone on to sort of future careers. But one of the other things that, you know, we proactively do as well is leverage Peacom. And so, you know, Peacom from an engagement tool perspective across the organization, not just in APAC, you know, so it's globally we're leveraging it, but, you know, we are frequently running pulse surveys. And I think for us, specifically in APAC, as we're growing, it's very easy when you're literally a handful of people as a team to connect regularly, touch base, how are you going, how are things? Yep. We know we're busy, but, you know, it's it's a lot easier to sort of look after each other. That becomes inherently more challenging the more you scale. And, frankly, I think, did you know, should we not have Peacom to enable that continual touch point with the teams? We you know, it'll be a challenge for us in APAC as we scale at such pace. So, but I think overall across the journey across the suite, there's been some, without it, it'd be an incredible challenge to to get to where we have today. Excellent. Thanks so much, Will. I mean, it's it's so interesting to hear your perspective as a, you know, the owner of a business line of the business line in the region here, how it all comes together from, like you said, from, you know, planning all the way to execution, to growing the business, to then also keeping a pulse and actually running the operations. And and, again, I think going back to the the business value of the transformation, that's that's really where, you know, the the return on investment comes from. Of course, the efficiencies are are there to augment the operations, but but really it's driving the businesses forward and and to our the points of discussion today about growing and scaling across borders. Excellent. Now we've been coming to the the end of our session here. So, you know, my thanks to the speakers really for sharing their thoughts. It's been so good to hear these diverse perspectives from the research that Supriya shared about state of play for SMBs in APAC to the real world and continuously evolving story of Knauss from Matt as the CFO and and the history of, you know, how this how things evolved, for Knauss as a as a growing business from professional services or to a product business as well. And then will your experience as as the owner of the business line here in the region at APAC as to how that journey evolved and continues to evolve here? If I was to break down the key takeaways from the perspective of key decision makers at these businesses, you know, from finance leaders, we heard from Matt about, you know, how unifying the system enables that real time multi currency reporting if we're talking about going across borders needed for market expansion and how AI driven insights or AI driven processes can boost efficiencies, profitability, but then also bring decisions to the fore to be able to drive the business forward. For HR leaders, we see how automation and and Supriya mentioned some examples there as well. See how automation can streamline everything across the hire to retire life cycle, boosting that agility, ensuring seamless compliance across regions, which for the APAC region is really a particular challenge as well as you grow across maturities also. And for the IT leaders, you know, we discussed the importance of a scalable cloud native foundation to reduce that friction of integration across different platforms, strengthen security for the long term, and also get those great AI enabled, capabilities that are already enabled embedded in the system. So, you know, what we hear from the KNOF story is is a powerful example of of what's possible. You know, from a Workday perspective, while we do have large enterprises as customers, including 60% of the Fortune 500, in fact, 75% of our customers have less than 3,500 employees. So from that vantage point, we have seen a number of organizations similar to KNOs start early in their journey with birthday and scale up as they as they become global names and go through IPO and go through acquisitions and the various other changes as they've grown across, regions. So, if you're in the audience and you're ready to start building your own resilient growth story, we invite you to take the next step. So please reach out, request a consultation with a Workday expert to discover how Vertech can drive strategic impact and potential ROI for your business as well. And we will share the links, in the chat and in our follow-up emails for you to be able to do that. Now with that, again, thanks very much to the speakers for joining us today, and thank you for joining us, for giving us your time today, joining this session. Hopefully, you found it useful, and, hopefully, we hear from you soon. Thanks very much.