Yesterday, Caroline, Ben and I attended Workday Elevate London 2024 as Preos was a silver sponsor. The event was a deep dive into the future of AI and Workday Extend, revealing how both will revolutionise customers’ businesses, the role of partners, and the approach Workday is taking.
Here are my key takeaways and insights from the event:
AI
Workday’s CTO, Joe Wilson, emphasised the critical need for responsible AI practices. At Workday, delivering AI responsibly is not just a goal; they say it’s a way of life. The power of the Workday platform demands it.
He called for more organisations to participate in data sharing (Innovation Services Agreement), noting that increased access to anonymous data enhances the performance of large language models.
Workday is leveraging AI to deliver ‘Hubs;’ tailored experiences for specific roles, designed to make employee experiences more engaging. Hubs for specified roles – HR Partner, recruiter, finance analyst etc – put the insights and process in one place making work more efficient and improving decisions.
The Workday Skills Cloud, boasting the world’s largest skills ontology, is a perfect application of AI. However, Workday’s approach is rooted in AI assisting in decision-making. Humans make the final decision.
The key question is what problems is AI solving? Workday says AI is great at:
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- Searching and examining data sets
- Summarising those patterns identified during the search
- Prediction; modelling, evaluating scenarios and providing decision support based on patterns
- Creating content based on those patterns, and personalising it.
For Workday, it means it can deliver improvements around three key areas:
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- Assisted Decisions
- Touchless Automation
- Engaging Experiences
One exciting development is a Copilot capability within Extend, allowing users to incorporate Workday Generative AI into their apps with ease, without needing to code.
Not only does this make the use of AI in Extend apps easy, but the nature of the Workday platform also means that customers benefit from continuous AI improvement; data generated by 65 million users is used to build large language models, and 8 billion daily transactions rapidly improve the models.
A key takeaway for me is that business leaders are asking what problems AI solves. I am sure we will see more development on this, but for now, it’s clear: AI is here to augment, not replace human capabilities.
Workday Extend
Workday Extend is driving the marketplace forward by offering packaged solutions from Workday partners. And Extend is allowing customers to replace outdated applications, like Excel and custom code, with more efficient solutions within the Workday platform.
Adaptability is now a crucial survival skill for all businesses and Extend is the tip of the arrow for adaptability, enabling:
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- Consolidation: removing outdated code and taking advantage of the Workday platform
- Urgency: build what you need, now
- Innovation: Extend apps are only limited by imagination, not skills
Currently, 900 customers are using Extend, with 1,600 apps in production, demonstrating its significant impact and growing adoption.
Workday Elevate 2024 offered a positive outlook on the future of AI and Extend. The atmosphere was filled with curiosity and optimism, as organisations focus on getting day-to-day operations right while exploring these innovations.
Marc Selzer, Business Development Director, Preos
About Marc
Marc is our Business Development Director. He has been in B2B software sales for almost thirty years. Having worked at companies such as General Electric and IBM, he has a wealth of experience in building effective relationships and defines his mission as bringing people, creativity and technology together to help clients achieve better business outcomes.
Over the last decade, Marc has worked at cloud leaders such as Salesforce and Workday, helping businesses from a range of industries solve operational challenges.
About Preos
At Preos, we help our clients get the most out of Workday. We ensure your organisation is using the platform to its full potential and getting the best possible return on your investment.
We address any inherited issues, increase user adoption, offer Workday support and introduce processes to ensure Workday meets – and continues to meet – the needs of your business in the long term.
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