Workday has announced seven new Illuminate Agents to help organisations automate their finance and HR processes. The announcement follows the revelation of agents at both Workday Rising US and Workday Rising EMEA last year. These new agents address three challenges within business. They automate frontline worker processes, streamline finance processes and help employees retrieve information quickly.
Gerrit Kazmaier, President Product and technology, Workday, commented, “The key to unlocking real business value with AI is to actively reshape the very core of how businesses operate. Workday is helping our 11,000+ customers in that transformation by leveraging our deep HR and finance expertise to deliver agents that provide measurable business value and empower them to thrive in the future of work.”
The seven new agents are:
Contingent Sourcing Agent
The Contingent Sourcing Agent accelerates temporary hiring by identifying the top talent open to contingent roles, streamlining screening, and enhancing applicant quality.
Contract Intelligence Agent
Available now, the Contract Intelligence Agent works within the Workday Contract Intelligence Lifecycle Management Solution, powered by Evisort AI. The agent will enhance legal and business decision-making. By rapidly reviewing contracts to identify risks, track key dates and fees, and provide ongoing analysis.
Shelle Elzer, Legal Operations Manager, NetApp, said, “Workday’s cutting-edge contract AI and automated workflow technology has already delivered tangible benefits. Saving us thousands of hours and millions of dollars across multiple critical corporate initiatives. We’re genuinely excited to see Workday expand on this agent innovation and are confident these advancements will empower our teams with even greater efficiencies that ultimately free them to focus on more meaningful work.”
Contract Negotiation Agent
Available now, the Contract Negotiation Agent works within the Workday Contract Lifecycle Management Agent, powered by Evisort AI. It expedites negotiations by drafting applicable contract language, detecting risks, and recommending revisions.
Document Driven Accounting Agent
The Document Driven Accounting Agent sets a new benchmark for accounting productivity. By extracting data from documents to automate billing, invoicing, and accounting entries.
Frontline Agent
The Frontline Agent saves frontline workers and managers time. By enabling text-based absence reporting, quickly identifying qualified replacements and helping to ensure compliance and accurate shift pay.
Self-Service Agent
The Self Service Agent powers employee and manager self-service. By providing instant answers to inquiries, assisting with complex tasks, and executing everyday actions on employees’ behalf. The Self-Service Agent will be generally available by the end of 2025.
Supplier Contracts Agent
The Supplier Contracts Agent proactively reviews supplier contracts to identify obligations and opportunities, aligning procurement processes with contract terms.
Shane Luke, Vice President, Workday Illuminate. “Data is a powerful catalyst for growth when it can be transformed into actionable intelligence. Our agents leverage the world’s most powerful HR and finance dataset to turn insights into impact – boosting productivity, enhancing compliance, and accelerating decision-making at every level.”
The Contingent Sourcing Agent, Document Driven Accounting Agent, Frontline Agent, and Supplier Contracts Agent will be available to early adopters by the end of 2025. With general availability planned for early 2026.
Workday lights up ERP with new Illuminate Agents
Behind these new agents is the Workday Illuminate AI engine. Other existing agents include Business Process Optimise Agent, Financial Audit Agent, Payroll Agent, Recruiting Agent, and Talent Mobility Agent.
Illuminate leverages what Workday claims is the largest and cleanest HR and financial dataset. The dataset is growing and already processes over a trillion transactions every year.
It means that the Agents have a vast data set to learn from (with the appropriate privacy controls in place), and means that any new AI Agents understand the context of any tasks they aim to perform. That context includes information from skills, to performance, goals, cost and ROI metrics, organisational models, and individual identities.
Customers can deploy and manage these existing and new agents using the Workday Agent System of Record. An administration tool, this system enables IT and business leaders to maximise the impact of their agents. And ensure they support their employees to drive measurable outcomes. Workday is also not stopping the development of more agents. It has already revealed several new agents in the works, including:
- BP Optimise Agent: Streamline Workday business processes in minutes with AI-powered recommendations.
- Financial Audit Agent: Increase efficiency and mitigate risk during the audit experience.
There are likely more in the pipeline as well. Mickey North Rizza, Group Vice President, IDC Enterprise Software, commented, “Workday continues to effectively target critical business outcomes in productivity, compliance, and insights with agentic AI. This is one more significant step in establishing AI agents as practical and impactful tools for business transformation.
“Customers need measurable business value and clear time-to-payback. And Workday’s innovations with agentic AI will resonate strongly with organisations looking to truly transform the future of work and fully take advantage of the power of AI.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean?
Workday is slowly lighting up its ERP platform with more and more digital workers. These remove some of the mundane, repeatable tasks that employees often have to spend time doing. Not only can these digital agents complete the work faster, they can arguably complete it more accurately as well.
What will be interesting to see is what impact these agents have on existing employees; digital workers generally assist rather than replace. They ease the burden on existing employees and enable them to scale faster and better. What will this mean for hiring decisions? Will organisations not need so many junior people in the future as they grow?
There is little doubt that AI is and will change how we work. Organisations that leverage Workday will be at the leading edge of this evolution. It will be interesting to see what stories customers have to tell about the rollout of these digital workers within their organisations.
