Workday customers showcase how to unlock AI value

Releasing AI-enabled services is one thing – what’s crucial is that your customers find value in your products. During the Workday Community Keynote at the tech firm’s Rising event in Las Vegas, two business leaders explained how their organizations are making the most of AI.

Rob Enslin, chief commercial officer at Workday, opened the keynote by suggesting that Workday’s product announcements this week have been focused on bold AI-enabled innovations with customers at the center. “It’s all about how you move from asking AI questions to getting the real work done,” he said.

To highlight Workday’s customer-centric approach, Enslin welcomed two business leaders to the stage. First up was Mike Harmer, VP of enterprise business platforms at Intermountain Health, who said his healthcare organization must deliver high-quality care cost-effectively, with technology playing a crucial role.

As a long-time Workday customer, the organization wanted its data consolidated in one place to exploit AI. Harmer also wanted to move beyond a system of record and create a system of action, where professionals could use data-powered services to make it easier for caregivers and administrators to boost their efficiency and spend more time with patients.

With solid Workday foundations in place, Harmer’s team explored AI. Intermountain Health leaned into Workday’s early adopter programs to test agents in a sandbox and build confidence. So far, they’ve used Developer Agent, Payroll Agent, and Self-Service Agent to develop use cases and solve business challenges.

Harmer is excited about the promise of Workday’s AI and data technologies: “When these tools get into the hands of our caregivers, it's exciting to see what they do with them. I think they're going to very intentionally disrupt and invent new ways to do things that weren't possible before.”

Sarah Clements, head of HR and shared services at BMO, explained to the audience how the bank launched Workday’s self-service agent to all 55,000 employees in June. Her digital-first organization is eager to embrace AI while simultaneously managing risk.

To move forward with agentic technology, Clements and her team engaged stakeholders across the business and created a responsible AI Forum: “We spent time with them explaining what the agent would do, and actually, more importantly, what it wouldn't do.”

The HR team looked at the bank’s policies and procedures and brought everything into the Workday platform. With the foundations in place, they began to explore use cases for agents, checking that technology answered questions in the way people anticipated.

“The number one thing we're trying to do is make things easy for employees and managers so that they can do their jobs,” Clements said, referring to the implementation of Workday’s Self-Service Agent and the use of natural language to ask key questions about key business activities, such as producing a mortgage letter for a customer.