A Look at Some of the Big Announcements and AI Perspectives at Workday Rising

The past couple years I kept getting text messages from CIOs that were in Las Vegas for the Workday Rising conference.  They’d ask me if I was at the conference and if I wanted to meet up with them at some of the evening vendor events.  I’d certainly watched the growing number of hospitals and health systems that were using Workday as their ERP and so I wasn’t surprised that so many healthcare CIOs were at the Workday user conference.

This year I decided to see if Workday was open to having me attend Rising as media.  I’d hoped to go to more of the event, but the schedule only allowed me to attend for half a day and I’m glad I did.  I got a chance to see the opening keynote session and was able to record a couple video interviews (watch for those over the next few weeks) before I had to head out for another conference.

Below you’ll find some of the key announcements and ideas that were shared during the opening keynote and the Workday leadership press event I was able to attend.  Plus, I added a little extra commentary.

It really has been amazing to see the rise of Workday in healthcare.  No doubt the EHR gets more visbility in healthcare because users are in it all day, but the ERP is really important as well.  Especially as healthcare has dealt with some of the major supply chain challenges it’s faced.

The comparison to Steve Jobs going back to Apple was clear.  It totally makes sense why he’d want to return as the leader of Workday.  AI presents such an enormous opportunity.  You could see why he’s a good leader.  He had a simplified and clear look at the future of where Workday is heading.

While it feels like generative AI kind of came out of nowhere (which in some ways it did), this timeline is a reminder that a lot of the automations, machine learning, and predecessors of AI have been part of our IT stack for a while.  Generative AI is taking a lot of things to the next level, but I’d also argue that many of the innovations the Workday and other companies are presenting don’t really use GenAI.  However, GenAI opened the door for many organizations to be more accepting of these automations.

It’s fascinating to see all of the large tech companies out there realizing how valuable the data they’re sitting on has become in this new AI world.  When it comes to HR and Finances, Workday certainly has a lot of data that it can leverage to help organizations run better.  And it’s extremely powerful that it’s in one data model and not distributed across their clients.  That’s a huge advantage over many of their competitors.  Otherwise, you have to do something like Epic is doing with Cosmos.  That’s good, but one data model in the cloud is better.

It was really fascinating to hear Aneel Bhusri talking about how Workday has zero margin for error.  We talk about that a lot in healthcare because a mistake can literally mean someone’s life.  No doubt there are some financial and legal issues when your ERP makes a mistake.  Also, would you really want to have your ERP say that some mistakes are ok?  I’m sure Workday customers are happy to hear that their focus is on zero margin for errors.

I definitely believe that this concept may be the hardest thing for healthcare to embrace.  Incremental improvement has been healthcare’s approach forever.  10x improvement in healthcare is hard to process.  Plus, it’s hard to get a committee to agree on redesigning a process versus layering AI on the existing process.  That takes real leadership to accomplish.

I’m sure that Workday users will be particularly curious about this list of agents.  What was even more interesting was their CEO said that when he returned to Workday as a leader, the list was much longer.  He took a page from Steve Jobs playbook and narrowed it down to the most important ones that they could execute well.  That focus likely meant they got them into the hands of their users more quickly.

They also made a bunch of big announcements. Sana as the new Workday interface is amazing since it’s similar to all the other GenAI interfaces (ie. a search bar).  Is that the new UI for everything?  I’m sure that many will celebrate the new “Workday Candidate Profile” which allows someone applying for a job on Workday to be able to use that profile across multiple job applications.  We all know how miserable it is to fill out all those redundant fields multiple times.

Trusted agent platform is quite interesting as well.  I kind of see it as their low-code/no-code approach to building on top of Workday.  Reminds me a lot of what Epic is doing with Agent Factory.

Seeing the demos of what’s possible with Sana on Workday and the integrations with other systems was amazing to see.  While it’s impressive, I did keep asking myself, are we ready for this?  And more importantly, what will it take for an organization to embrace the culture change that’s needed to enjoy this type of automation?

Leaders have a lot to process with everything happening with AI.  In healthcare we’ve been so “human in the loop” that most solutions have been co-pilot.  That can be great, but it does miss out on the benefit of auto pilot being able to work around the clock.  The cost of AI is going to be a big discussion.  In fact, I see more and more companies embracing more deterministic solutions because the cost of generative AI is so much more.  We’ll see how these costs continue to evolve.

This comment kind of took me by surprise.  I thought he was going to say that previously businesses neeed more people to grow, but now they have AI bots that can help them to grow.  The fact that he said that technology can be leveraged to make better use of your existing people shouldn’t have been a surprise because of what Workday does, but it was a different perspective than what I expected.  What do you think of this?  Is there a lot of people in healthcare that could be used more efficiently?

These 3 takeways summarized the opening keynote well.  Workday’s AI has great guardrails to ensure that they’re following the required laws.  To really embrace the latest AI, we need to redesign the work and not just layer AI on top.  And AI can help companies evaluate their talent and consider ways to unlock more value from your people.

All in all, I wish I’d had more time to be at Workday Rising.  The ERP really doesn’t get enough attention in healthcare even though in many ways it can be as impactful as the EHR.  There are just fewer users spending their day working in Workday vs the EHR so it doesn’t get the same attention.  What do you think of these announcements and perspectives shared at Workday Rising?

The past couple years I kept getting text messages from CIOs that were in Las Vegas for the Workday Rising conference.  They’d ask me if I was at the conference and if I wanted to meet up with them at some of the evening vendor events.  I’d certainly watched the growing number of hospitals and health systems that were using Workday as their ERP and so I wasn’t surprised that so many healthcare CIOs were at the Workday user conference.

This year I decided to see if Workday was open to having me attend Rising as media.  I’d hoped to go to more of the event, but the schedule only allowed me to attend for half a day and I’m glad I did.  I got a chance to see the opening keynote session and was able to record a couple video interviews (watch for those over the next few weeks) before I had to head out for another conference.

Below you’ll find some of the key announcements and ideas that were shared during the opening keynote and the Workday leadership press event I was able to attend.  Plus, I added a little extra commentary.

It really has been amazing to see the rise of Workday in healthcare.  No doubt the EHR gets more visbility in healthcare because users are in it all day, but the ERP is really important as well.  Especially as healthcare has dealt with some of the major supply chain challenges it’s faced.

The comparison to Steve Jobs going back to Apple was clear.  It totally makes sense why he’d want to return as the leader of Workday.  AI presents such an enormous opportunity.  You could see why he’s a good leader.  He had a simplified and clear look at the future of where Workday is heading.

While it feels like generative AI kind of came out of nowhere (which in some ways it did), this timeline is a reminder that a lot of the automations, machine learning, and predecessors of AI have been part of our IT stack for a while.  Generative AI is taking a lot of things to the next level, but I’d also argue that many of the innovations the Workday and other companies are presenting don’t really use GenAI.  However, GenAI opened the door for many organizations to be more accepting of these automations.

It’s fascinating to see all of the large tech companies out there realizing how valuable the data they’re sitting on has become in this new AI world.  When it comes to HR and Finances, Workday certainly has a lot of data that it can leverage to help organizations run better.  And it’s extremely powerful that it’s in one data model and not distributed across their clients.  That’s a huge advantage over many of their competitors.  Otherwise, you have to do something like Epic is doing with Cosmos.  That’s good, but one data model in the cloud is better.

It was really fascinating to hear Aneel Bhusri talking about how Workday has zero margin for error.  We talk about that a lot in healthcare because a mistake can literally mean someone’s life.  No doubt there are some financial and legal issues when your ERP makes a mistake.  Also, would you really want to have your ERP say that some mistakes are ok?  I’m sure Workday customers are happy to hear that their focus is on zero margin for errors.

I definitely believe that this concept may be the hardest thing for healthcare to embrace.  Incremental improvement has been healthcare’s approach forever.  10x improvement in healthcare is hard to process.  Plus, it’s hard to get a committee to agree on redesigning a process versus layering AI on the existing process.  That takes real leadership to accomplish.

I’m sure that Workday users will be particularly curious about this list of agents.  What was even more interesting was their CEO said that when he returned to Workday as a leader, the list was much longer.  He took a page from Steve Jobs playbook and narrowed it down to the most important ones that they could execute well.  That focus likely meant they got them into the hands of their users more quickly.

They also made a bunch of big announcements. Sana as the new Workday interface is amazing since it’s similar to all the other GenAI interfaces (ie. a search bar).  Is that the new UI for everything?  I’m sure that many will celebrate the new “Workday Candidate Profile” which allows someone applying for a job on Workday to be able to use that profile across multiple job applications.  We all know how miserable it is to fill out all those redundant fields multiple times.

Trusted agent platform is quite interesting as well.  I kind of see it as their low-code/no-code approach to building on top of Workday.  Reminds me a lot of what Epic is doing with Agent Factory.

Seeing the demos of what’s possible with Sana on Workday and the integrations with other systems was amazing to see.  While it’s impressive, I did keep asking myself, are we ready for this?  And more importantly, what will it take for an organization to embrace the culture change that’s needed to enjoy this type of automation?

Leaders have a lot to process with everything happening with AI.  In healthcare we’ve been so “human in the loop” that most solutions have been co-pilot.  That can be great, but it does miss out on the benefit of auto pilot being able to work around the clock.  The cost of AI is going to be a big discussion.  In fact, I see more and more companies embracing more deterministic solutions because the cost of generative AI is so much more.  We’ll see how these costs continue to evolve.

This comment kind of took me by surprise.  I thought he was going to say that previously businesses neeed more people to grow, but now they have AI bots that can help them to grow.  The fact that he said that technology can be leveraged to make better use of your existing people shouldn’t have been a surprise because of what Workday does, but it was a different perspective than what I expected.  What do you think of this?  Is there a lot of people in healthcare that could be used more efficiently?

These 3 takeways summarized the opening keynote well.  Workday’s AI has great guardrails to ensure that they’re following the required laws.  To really embrace the latest AI, we need to redesign the work and not just layer AI on top.  And AI can help companies evaluate their talent and consider ways to unlock more value from your people.

All in all, I wish I’d had more time to be at Workday Rising.  The ERP really doesn’t get enough attention in healthcare even though in many ways it can be as impactful as the EHR.  There are just fewer users spending their day working in Workday vs the EHR so it doesn’t get the same attention.  What do you think of these announcements and perspectives shared at Workday Rising?