Workday Agentic AI Targets Big, Complex Processes w/Big ROI

Bob Evans (0:00)

Hello, my friends, welcome back to Cloud Wars Minute. Interesting conversations on the Workday FY27 Q2 earnings call last week. One of the things that came up here was the difference in their approach to Agenic AI that's come about over the last several months since the return of CEO Aneel Bhusri. Aneel had moved up to executive chairman. He rejoined the company as CEO early this year because he said the ramifications of the AI revolution were such. He really needed somebody with deep technology understanding to be able to steer the direction of what was happening here. These applications change data, data clouds, agents moved into the forefront, all of those things changing quickly. So Bhusri came back. One of the big things that happened here, he said, we don't necessarily want to have a whole lot of agents for a lot of simple functions. We want to focus on a genetic AI that targets big complex processes and challenges that are companies that our customers are facing in HR and financials.

Here's one of the quotes that he gave on the Q2 earnings call.

He said, we have to have agents that deliver real art alive. He said, we've killed a lot of agents since I've come back, or we've rolled small, simple agents up into bigger, more complex agents. And he said, anybody can solve the simple problems. That's not a place where we're going to be able to deliver this real art alive for customers. So interesting time now for Workday, right? Because they're a big company, right? They're guiding to $10 billion in revenue for FY27, which will end January 31st. So it's not that they're a little company, but relative to their big competitors, SAP and Oracle, Workday has to be careful and focused in what it tries to do because it doesn't have the scale that its competitors do. So they're differentiating. And I think what Bhusri is saying here is consistent with the position the company's had for a long time, which is we're going to take care of your most important assets, your people and your money. We're going to do it in ways that will deliver a huge unconditional trust.

So he's talking about now how these agents will come in, really tie in with all the existing systems and data that their customers already have. So that these complex problems that are so vexing right now to so many businesses and lots of industries, that Workday is going to be able to fix them. I've got a detailed article coming up later this morning that offers some more perspectives on this. Also some comments from President and Chief Product and Technology Officer, Gerrit Kazmeier. He goes into some detail about why these new wave of agents are so vital that they've got to be able to be connected to everything, be able to handle these complex problems and drive that big ROI. And the officer threw pretty interesting examples of how Workday is doing that.

Thanks for being with us here at Cloud Wars Minute and I hope you have a fantastic day.