Enterprise tech solutions don’t fit neatly into silos anymore. With system convergence and AI agents, that’s all changed.
Indeed, workflows are expanding beyond departments, and solutions are knitting together
As such, parts of the business that may never have worked with a platform like Workday, like CX functions, may consider becoming more familiar with such leading technologies.
Here’s an example. Consider a customer service rep raising a query regarding their job benefits. In the future, they’ll likely interact with an AI agent that runs across into Workday to resolve their query.
As customer experience leaders collaborate with IT on these cross-department workflows, it’s fascinating to consider how leading tech brands, like Workday, are expanding their portfolios.
On that note, here are five of the biggest announcements from Workday Rising 2025, including product updates, a massive acquisition, and milestone partnerships.
1. Meet Workday’s New Illuminate Agents
Peter Bayless, Chief Technology Officer at Workday, gave key context to Workday’s product direction:
We’re shifting from the system of record for people and money to a system of action for people and money that understands their businesses, understands what they need, and helps them reimagine what work gets done.
As Workday becomes a “system of action for people and money,” its “Illuminate” AI agents will drive the action.
At Rising 2025, Workday announced three more AI agents to its Illuminate portfolio.
The first is a Case Agent that streamlines HR case management by reviewing cases, applying compliance context, and drafting responses.
Next is a Performance Review Agent. This gives managers a first draft of performance reviews, pulling in data from other systems.
Finally, a Financial Close Agent coordinates tasks, flags issues in real time, and reduces risk in the month-end close process.
The new agents bolster those already available on the Workday platform, as below.
Yet, as businesses deploy these agents and scale AI, managing the associated costs can be tricky. Recognizing this, Workday is introducing a new way for businesses to consume its AI: Flex Credits.
These credits come as part of Workday subscriptions, with the vendor promising no hidden fees or premium licenses.
Additionally, all the Credits are usable across any Workday AI agent or API. Meanwhile, customers can track their ROI “in a single dashboard.”
2. Workday Unveils a New Developer Platform
Workday Extend is a low-/no-code app development solution on which over 1,400 customers – including Target, Netflix, and NASDAQ – have built over 3,000 apps.
Now, Workday is introducing Build, the next evolution of Extend.
“This isn’t just another low-code platform,” said Mark Woollen, GVP of Partner Innovation at Workday. “It’s a complete offering, and designed specifically with the intelligent enterprise in mind.”
That complete offering includes several new tools and features. These include:
- A FlowWise Agent Builder – A low-code tool to design, deploy, and manage AI agents.
- AI Developer Tools – These include generative AI copilot and an Agent Gateway to connect AI agents built on Workday with third-party agents.
- An Expanded Ecosystem – Here, Workday provides vetted partner solutions that address industry- and region-specific needs.
- A Global Community – A space for developers to learn, certify, and collaborate.
Interestingly, in a demo, Workday also showed how its AI agents could connect to third-party apps like Microsoft Teams or Slack to automate cross-department tasks and publish directly into the Workday system of record.
3. Get Ready for Yet Another Data Cloud…
Workday Build sits on top of another new platform: Workday Data Cloud.
The platform aims to solve a common problem: enterprise data is often scattered, inconsistent, and siloed.
Workday Data Cloud does so by offering organizations secure, zero-copy access to their Workday data, leveraging the following key components:
- Apache Iceberg-based data lake (open standards).
- A Direct SQL access API for real-time insights.
- Workday Prism for governance and trust.
Through partnerships with Snowflake, Databricks, and Salesforce, businesses may combine Workday’s people and money data with broader enterprise datasets.
As a result, they can combine EX and CX data, unlock richer analytics, and accelerate AI innovation.
4. Workday to Acquire Sana for $1.1BN
Workday has agreed to snap up Sana Labs in the hope of turning Workday “into the new front door for work.”
The Sana Agent is critical here and will help to create a new user experience within Workday.
Indeed, it will help find information by scouring company data and knowledge sources, reason with that information, and act on it.
From there, it may create new documents, presentations, dashboards, and even “full learning courses” based on the information it takes.
Additionally, it can automate tasks by tracking changes in the data, which may span the enterprise.
So, a Workday user could soon use the Sana Agent to automate an action with an adjacent platform, like an employee service CRM module, without leaving the platform.
As such, this idea of a new front door for work is exciting. Yet, Sana Learn is another fascinating addition the acquisition brings to the company, as it could transform the Workday Learning platform. Below is a closer look.
5. Workday to Deliver a “Unified AI Agent Experience” with Microsoft
Finally, Workday has entered into a new relationship with Microsoft to help deliver a “unified AI agent experience.”
What does this mean? Essentially, brands can build AI agents on Copilot Studio and register and manage them within the Workday Agent System of Record (ASOR).
As such, if a brand wants to automate a workflow within their Workday instance, they can turn to Copilot Studio and deploy an AI agent within the Workday platform.
Key to this is a new integration between Workday Agent System of Record (ASOR) and Microsoft Entra Agent ID.
Per Workday, this will ensure that each AI agent entering its ecosystem can be verified and has enough business context to operate securely across the organization.
CX Today will keep posting roundups like this across event season. To stay on top of what’s happening, subscribe to our newsletter.
