Pete’s Top 10 Takeaways from the Workday Innovation Summit 2026

[00:00:07] [SPEAKER_00] Welcome everyone to another episode of the HR & Payroll 2.0. I'm Pete Tiliakos and as always, I'm joined by the legendary Julie Fernandez. Welcome Julie.

[00:00:15] [SPEAKER_01] Thanks Pete. And I know you and I are trying to catch up because there's been a whole host of events that we want to talk about starting with today.

[00:00:23] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, yeah. We recapped a bit of it in our news episode, but there's been so many more. And I thought this one, this is one that's been, I wouldn't call it controversial, but there's just been a lot of talk, right? It's a Workday Innovation Summit. It's something I'm very proud to go to.

[00:00:37] [SPEAKER_00] I think this might be my fourth or fifth year joining this. And not every analyst gets invited to this. This is a very private event that Workday does. Consider it their spring analyst day, if you will. Right? A lot of HCMs, they got a lot of product. They will do a spring sort of H1 update with us and then do a fall update that is generally with rising in their case or, you know, whatever, fill in the blank. So yeah, so this is really fun. I mean, it's really nice to go out to Napa, a beautiful place, get to hang out with the Workday C-suite and the peers.

[00:01:07] [SPEAKER_00] My peers in the marketplace, Holger Mueller and Seisha Gar and the others. So I thought what we could do though, Julie, is recap this event, but I want to do this a little different than we have in the past, but go ahead and say, go ahead. And then I can finish.

[00:01:20] [SPEAKER_01] I was just going to say, so this is the spring one. I know it's been a few, a couple of weeks, maybe a few weeks, but this is the spring one. And it usually comes out either right before or right after the, uh, uh, the upgrade, the release for the release one for 20.

[00:01:33] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Again, they give us two updates a year to analysts, right? Well, they give us more than two, but two major updates. And so this is, they, they generally will do one in spring and then one in fall. This is really a look ahead at all of 26 and even some, some big, big bets into 27 and more. Um, so yeah, I would say this is, uh, probably the update in H1 with stuff coming in H2 plus. Um, it depends on the vendor, but for Workday. Yeah. This is an April, typically a late April event. It was this time. Uh, and I did it in conjunction with World at Work, right?

[00:02:02] [SPEAKER_00] We were there recording. I had to dip out a little early, uh, that week, that last week of April. So what I thought I would do with this, there's been so much chatter in the marketplace about Workday, right? Is, is, first of all, is it the end of SaaS? We've had a million debates about that. SaaSpocalypse. I think I keep seeing in some of the, some of the headlines. You know, when you sit and look at this SaaS platforms, I actually think it's more of an opportunity for them, assuming they make the move into AI, obviously an agents and agentic capabilities.

[00:02:30] [SPEAKER_00] But the, the SaaS platforms, the, the actual ERPs, right? The baseline platforms for many, many things. Um, but ERP, especially across the organization is really a foundational element in this new world, right? You're going to have to have controls and governance and data and policies and, um, somewhere for, for agents to have a source.

[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_01] History, audit. I mean, all sorts of, yeah.

[00:02:55] [SPEAKER_00] What's going to, what's going to command them and control them. So I, I think your, your, you know, your platforms like your ERPs, your SAP, your SAP, your Workday, your Zoho's, your Oracles, whatever. I actually think they're increasingly more valuable. It's just going to depend on how they go about preserving that and shifting into this new, uh, agentic sort of, um, AI driven orchestration, contextual layer kind of world. Right. And so, yeah. So look, a lot of, a lot of speculation, but I will say this, Julia, I don't know if you saw this week.

[00:03:23] [SPEAKER_00] Workday released their FY27 Q1 numbers. Did you check it out? Do you see them?

[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_01] I, I saw them quickly, but I'm sure I don't dissect them like you do. Tell me, give me your, give me a read. Yeah.

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_00] Not bad for a company that's dying apparently. Um, or at least that's what the media would have you believe, which I think is absurd. Uh, but yeah, first, uh, first quarter total revs of 2.5, 4, 2 billion up 13 and a half percent year on year subscription revenues, uh, 2.35, 4 billion up 14.3% year on year. So look, that's pretty good. Right. I mean, 15% growth, double digit growth. I think most companies would be really happy with that.

[00:04:03] [SPEAKER_00] Now, certainly there's probably a bigger story underneath all of that workday made some acquisitions. There's some, you know, some other things there, but the bottom line is, is I, I, I think that, um, they have a healthy business. They've had a healthy, healthy business. They're doing very well. I think with their, with their customer base, um, and helping them navigate together. They're navigating through, through these changes.

[00:04:22] [SPEAKER_00] So what I thought I would do for this, if you don't mind is there's like a million articles out there, right? Like I I've seen everything from extremes to, you know, practical things to, uh, whatever. I, I don't, I'm not saying one or one is right, wrong or indifferent, but what I didn't want to do was just go back and do kind of the same old thing here. We're a little late with this. It's already, you know, been about a month since it, since it happened. Uh, and I would tell you that if you want a really good deep dive breakdown out there, Stacia Gar, founder of Red Thread Research,

[00:04:52] [SPEAKER_00] has probably the best breakdown by an analyst that I've seen yet. Um, and the way she presented that is, uh, she did a little TLDR meaning like, look, if it's too much to read, just read this executive summary up front so you can get relieved from having to read the novel. But yeah.

[00:05:07] [SPEAKER_01] And I think your folks are just wondering what's all that noise been because you've missed it, right? Or it hasn't been hot on your social media radar. In my LinkedIn newsletter, I, uh, I grabbed some of the top attention grabbers on both sides of the aisle. And, uh, and called those out and gave links to all of those. So, you know, um, so take a look at my last newsletter and it'll have, you know, all the thought leaders and pundits that you would expect to be making noise, um, in different directions.

[00:05:35] [SPEAKER_01] And you could get caught up and at least find the top six or eight articles there as well.

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And look, I mean, anecdotally, anecdotally, as I go around the industry, I think I mentioned this the other day, I was with the CloudPay group, right? At the Paymakers event, uh, heavy workday. I'd say, yeah, big, big, big, I'd say nine out of 10 people I talked to were, were, were workday users. All of them had either renewed or planning to renew. So I think, I think that's interesting, right?

[00:06:01] [SPEAKER_00] I mean, I'm not saying that's indicative of the entire market, but it seems like people are obviously, you know, building their organizations on workday and continuing to, to go down that path and looking to them to lead them into that.

[00:06:11] [SPEAKER_01] Actually, one of those articles that was kind of part of making all that noise, I'm pretty sure, uh, it was either Jerome Gouverneil or Thomas Otter. One of them, I think it was Jerome, um, was writing about the size of the, just the sheer size of the ERP market and likening it to the ice business, right?

[00:06:29] [SPEAKER_01] Like, uh, one in 20 Americans at one point in time worked in refrigeration before refrigeration. And so when you look at not just workday, but the SAS ecosystem, the implementers, the AMS folks, the providers themselves, that was the size and scale that, uh, he referenced that we're talking about here.

[00:06:49] [SPEAKER_01] So, you know, it's kind of hard to take one in 20, every global workers, you know, fiddling around with the ERP ecosystem and, and poof, make that go away with, um, with AI, you know, in any expedient timeframe. So, so I think you're right. Let's, let's focus on like some of the details and stay away from some of the hype in this one.

[00:07:09] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. I, I, I, yeah. I mean, I don't, I just don't want to give another opinion of what's going to happen in the future. I just think there's just too many out there and who knows? I mean, it's so, it's so, it's so early, you know, where we're going to land and what it's going to be is going to be, um, still very unpredictable. But what I thought I would do, Julie, is I've got like a, what I call a, and now I wouldn't liken this to a Dave Letterman top 10. It's not meant to roast work day or anything, or the innovation summit in any way. This is more of a top 10 things that you need to know, right. And why they matter is what I'm going to try to do.

[00:07:38] [SPEAKER_00] So I'm going to, I'm going to try to break it down that way. Uh, I am going to, I wrote this out. It was, this is so long that I had such a meaty update that I had to write this out a little bit. So I am going to read in some cases. Um, but I'm going to give you some background color to some of it. And again, not in any order. Uh, I'd say it's kind of.

[00:07:55] [SPEAKER_01] I was just going to ask, are you starting with number one or number 10?

[00:07:58] [SPEAKER_00] No, no, no. There's 10 of them. It's just 10. I think it flows kind of in a story form is the way I kind of reshuffled them to give it a little bit of a flow, but, but, uh, but there's no ranking here or anything. Like that. It's just the 10 things I feel you need to know. Okay.

[00:08:11] [SPEAKER_00] All right. All right. Let's start off. Let's start off with the first one that I think most of us all know. And that is that Anil is back, right. Anil Bursary was the co-founder alongside Dave Duffield 20 years ago in the diner. You can, you've probably all heard the story, right? The, uh, PeopleSoft buy out by Oracle, very hostile back then, uh, spawned them. The boy, the boys, the boys to go and create something new, right? Kind of a Jerry Maguire. Who's going with me? Uh, and, and some of the team did. Uh, I've met a few of those folks that are still, still around.

[00:08:38] [SPEAKER_00] But I think what you're talking about now is, um, Anil stepping back into the reins as CEO. He didn't exactly leave entirely. He had stepped back and was actually working hands on with the product, doing a little bit more programming. I know he was working around with AI, especially with the Anthropic CEO. So yeah, Anil's back and he's, he's taken the helm. I thought it was pretty interesting. You know, he gave, um, he gave a talk about, about Workday's new chapter, right? I think, I think they call this the fourth, fourth chapter or something like that.

[00:09:08] [SPEAKER_00] Uh, and really how, you know, they need to re, reborn, rebirth themselves, if you will, uh, as an AI company. So basically the first thing he felt they needed to do was reorient their North Star. And that is around AI. Um, I think, you know, there was a bit of feeling that maybe they had gotten a little bit, you know, maybe a little too operationally excellent focused, but kind of lost their way in terms of culture and people and product. And some of the things that made them special in the beginning.

[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_00] And I think Anil feels like they, they need to get back to that to make them, you know, special again in this new chapter. And so I thought that was pretty cool. The other thing, Julia, I thought was really interesting. Uh, I, I took a lot of enjoyment in is Anil regularly referenced Steve Jobs throughout the, the, the few days that we were together. And I think what he was, uh, or I know what he was referring to is that when Steve Jobs, you know, he exited, uh, Apple at one point a bit unceremoniously. I don't know if you remember this. We were kids probably back then, the Pepsi, someone from Pepsi.

[00:10:04] [SPEAKER_00] I think took over as the CEO and Steve Jobs was pushed out of his company and, you know, he had to come back and kind of clean Apple up and bring it back to what it is today. Uh, bring the vision, bring all of that. And so I think the way Anil, uh, studied that was really interesting. He talked about studying Steve Jobs return and how some of that meant cleaning up the portfolio and returning to what made them special again. And, and, and all of that was, I think that resonated with me. Um, you know, as a, as a, as an end customer, I guess you could say, or end listener of the, of the, of the, of the story.

[00:10:33] [SPEAKER_00] So I like that.

[00:10:35] [SPEAKER_01] Probably, um, also has to be special and different. I'm guessing. I mean, a lot of folks that have been with Workday from the beginning were attracted to it for its power of one, you know, message and approach. And, you know, I don't know if those, those days that approach, I think I feel like they've outgrown it a little bit. And so it would probably be very tough to go back to that. Yeah. The original Workday, it's, uh, just moving forward and kind of bringing it back in line.

[00:11:00] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Um, with its special vision, right? It will be different. It won't be what it was at the onset.

[00:11:06] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. We went from, uh, the right, the power of one to the power of apps. I think it went. And then now we're really going into sort of a next gen ERP sort of messaging, uh, and being a very, you know, enterprise launching pad for, for all things, uh, AI in the future. So, yeah, I mean, look, what I think it means for, um, the buy side and what it, why it matters is that you've got to evaluate Workday for more, I think in all your ERPs for way more than features and functions.

[00:11:30] [SPEAKER_00] I think you have to look at it as a totality of how it helps you structure your, your path. So, all right, let's go to number two. Let's go to number two. Workday's AI strategy is about enterprise rails, not lawless agents. So, one of the things that Anil kind of, uh, talked a lot about is that look, and I think this goes to my infrastructure point in the beginning, that SaaS becomes more valuable when you think of it this way as an enterprise sort of rails underneath the hood powering, uh, the enterprise.

[00:11:59] [SPEAKER_00] Right. And I think that's going to come in the form of things like data, governance, structure, policy, um, permission, right? All of those things, auditability, right? That's a big one for, for the payroll world and the finance world. So, Workday, you know, has to be very careful with, with its AI, right? It has to be very deterministic and it has to be able to work with agents that are working under structure and, and, and keeping, keeping these things in line. So, I think that's a really interesting point because I think it does make a case for something bigger than Workday and that is SaaS, right?

[00:12:28] [SPEAKER_00] You're going to need, uh, ERP SaaS technology as the foundational launch pad for all these great things that we want to do, right? I told that story last year about the lady who told me all these great things they want to do in learning and development. And then when I asked what core HR they were on, it was one of the legacy on-prem solutions. And we just kind of smiled and we're like, ah, you know, you're not going to probably do a lot of those things that you're looking to do because you can't, um, because they're just not ready. So, yeah, I think this infrastructure is important.

[00:12:53] [SPEAKER_01] I love that because I think sometimes when folks are projecting AI's impact and influence into its, you know, infinite, you know, super revolutionary bit, they tend to focus on unstructured data, which is a strength for AI. And the fact of the matter is you still have compliance, you still have security, you still have auditability, you still have these things that say, okay, I'm using tools that, that flourish with unstructured data and multiplicitous data.

[00:13:23] [SPEAKER_01] And yet if I break or forget the foundations, you know, I could be in for a Titanic, right? Right, yeah. Something dramatic.

[00:13:32] [SPEAKER_00] And you could be using great AI solutions all over the place, but, but, but what, you know, if they're taking, if they're acting on someone's behalf, who's controlling that, right? Who's giving it what it can access and what it can change? Something's going to have to issue that access. Something's going to have to give it the guardrails and the policy and the controls and the authorization. And I think that's where you're seeing Workday's, you know, focus on preparing all that. So, all right. The other cool part, Julie, I don't think this is new, but I'll just put it out there again.

[00:14:00] [SPEAKER_00] Sauna is obviously becoming the front door of Workday's AI experience. We got to get hands-on. I don't know. This was pretty cool. We're analysts. We always love getting hands-on and we got to build in Sauna. I thought it was pretty neat. We had a little work workshop breakout where they allowed us to, you know, build workflows, create an agent, give it, you know, give it life, give it action, and put it into play. And so, you know, look, Sauna is, this is developing, right? They just bought Sauna.

[00:14:28] [SPEAKER_00] I think there is an opt-in to coming over to that new experience. And I believe some customers already have started going that way, if I'm not mistaken. But fundamentally, this is going to be the future of the Workday experience. And building agents and enabling activities around agentic capabilities is going to be key. So, yeah, we enjoyed that. It was fun.

[00:14:46] [SPEAKER_01] This is giving me flashbacks to our PA world, you know, where you go to conferences and events and you get to, like, build and use your own little baby bot, right? So it sounds fun. I'm glad you had a chance to do that. Was that number three or was that still part of number two? That was number three.

[00:15:02] [SPEAKER_00] No, no, that's number three, right? Number three is Sauna is becoming the front door. We already know that. We talked about that. They've made that very, very clear when they acquired it. But, yeah, I mean, look, this idea of headless technology, headless experience, right? You know, zero UI, I think, is becoming more reality. Things like Sauna are going to make that happen. Yeah. SAP is doing the same with Juul. And everyone's fighting to be the front door. I kind of wonder, Julie, does it matter how you enter the house? I mean, I don't know that it does.

[00:15:30] [SPEAKER_01] I think the argument is maybe it doesn't as long as, you know, as long as you end up in the same house. And not in some kind of a maze, right? That takes you to some. Yeah, get you lost.

[00:15:42] [SPEAKER_00] I think everyone wants a frictionless world, right? We want to get to a point. And look, I don't think most employees give a damn whether or not it's Workday or Cornerstone or UKG or what it is. They just know they need to take action. They want to tell that system, here's the action I need. Where and who goes and does that and connects all that for them? I don't know that they care. And so, you know, at the end of the day.

[00:16:03] [SPEAKER_01] Most often they've never known, right? I mean, even who owns the portal or where did the portal come from? You know, users have never really known very well what that is.

[00:16:13] [SPEAKER_00] So, agree. No, absolutely. Absolutely. So, all right. So moving along that line, number four would be that Workday is absolutely trying to make enterprise software easier to use, right? Not just more powerful. So, you know, one of the things they emphasize around that user experience was more personalization, more searchability, more AI ready, and certainly more natural language processing in context. So I think that contextual layer is where everything is headed, right?

[00:16:38] [SPEAKER_00] I just was talking about global payroll a little while ago with someone and we were talking about the contextual layer that payroll can provide, you know, to the industry or to the business. So, reducing that friction, those clicks, you know, the speed to which you can get access to information, the orchestration that's coming. I think all of that is certainly going to make life a lot easier when we use these systems so that we don't have to be experts. Again, I don't care how the transaction, the cake gets made. I just want a cake, right? I want a day off.

[00:17:09] [SPEAKER_00] I want a manager hired. I want a report, whatever. Yeah.

[00:17:13] [SPEAKER_01] Pete, did that highlight come with the notion that getting to that ease of use, that next level ease of use is going to come through agents and AI versus something else versus just being built into the product? I mean, or is it just kind of a universal goal is to really increase the usability?

[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. I think at the end of the day, you know, work tech or ERP tech, whatever you want to call it, needs to be an everybody thing. It doesn't need to just be for finance or HR. It needs to be for everyone and everyone needs to be able to act in there. And so, yeah, I would say it's both. Is that right? Does that answer your question? Yeah.

[00:17:48] [SPEAKER_01] Well, it does. I mean, I know we'll get to this maybe toward the end, but I just see some different commercials evolving as all of these things start to take place that look at consumption versus subscription. Right. And so I do think at some point in time in the future, it will be important to know, is this part and parcel of the product and the subscription itself? Or do I only get this if I start, you know, buying into a consumption-based model? Yeah.

[00:18:12] [SPEAKER_00] Oh, what you're saying, is it included or?

[00:18:14] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Yeah. Will it be included or do I have to do flex credits or do something else, right? Yeah. Just to stick with the work daily and go?

[00:18:22] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, it depends. It depends. A lot of this is in module. There are add-ons, certainly. I would argue that things like Paradox and Hired Score, these sort of higher level SKUs are going to come with that. And of course, building agents then is the flex credit model, which is still evolving. That's coming along. So we'll see. Okay. So let's talk. This one I called vertical AI. I don't know if that's really a thing, but verticalization of AI, right? It's going to be a thing now. I know. I don't know if that's a thing.

[00:18:51] [SPEAKER_00] I think there's a lot of value for Workday, right? Think about some of these things, the business domains that they tackled to solve with those acquisitions, right? Recruiting with Paradox for the candidate experience, Hired Score for Talent Intelligence or Evisort for contracts. All those things are tackling business problems across more than just one tower, right? More than just HR. So I think there's a lot of opportunity. And there's also a lot of that opportunity, too, from a sector perspective to bring solutions to the table.

[00:19:21] [SPEAKER_00] And that's where the partners and the extend capabilities and the build on Workday capabilities are key, too. So I love this. I think it's pretty cool. It's all kind of coming together.

[00:19:30] [SPEAKER_01] I'll tell you what I think is interesting about that. What's interesting about that is I think that appeals more just naturally to the mid-market than it does to the enterprise market just because of the sheer number of stakeholders and owners, right? When you start talking about that verticalization, you start crossing domains or functional areas with different owners. And that can just take a lot to socialize and to get buy-in in large enterprise.

[00:19:53] [SPEAKER_01] And I feel like, you know, I see some of the mid-sized organizations having an easier time adopting that because there are fewer stakeholders that might love something else, right?

[00:20:04] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Let's go into number six. Customer examples showed that AI is moving from demo to measurable outcomes. One of the cool things, Julie, is I think, and Workday, you know, said this, like, look, a year ago, we would have had very little maybe output in adoption. Now, this year, they're showing millions of transactions. So you've got a really solid, and that's across things like Evisort, HiredScore, and others, right, are starting to make an impact.

[00:20:31] [SPEAKER_00] You even had some really cool customer examples that share, I can't share them, but shared some interesting savings and output details of their performance. So that's good, right? We're getting, we're going beyond hype.

[00:20:42] [SPEAKER_01] There's legit use cases out there to be had. Listen, that's been a thing. You can't, you're in conferences and everybody wants you to talk about, you know, certain types of successes and outcomes, and there have been very few to be had just yet. So, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Very encouraging. The practitioners are just going to love that. Leaders, practitioners will love it.

[00:21:02] [SPEAKER_00] So, number seven I have here is deployment agents. Could it change the economics of the Workday ownership? So, one of the bigger announcements is that they're looking at deployment agents, right? Forward deploy. I don't know if they're talking forward deployed agents, but I am seeing that more across the marketplace, right? And really helping. I mean, I feel like everybody's been trying to help customers get on to systems much easier, much faster. And certainly, you know, move data better, move data more efficiently and cleanly.

[00:21:31] [SPEAKER_00] We talked about, you know, mid-cycle pay conversions. Could that be possible with AI? I know we've talked that on the show. So, I think this is really interesting because if you can lower the effort, lower the time to live, obviously that's best for everyone. It's going to, obviously, Workday's numbers need that, right? To get them live, get them, you know, paying their subscriptions. But also for the customer, right? Getting their ROI and their business cases met sooner. So, I think we're getting, you know, we're getting progress there as well. Yeah.

[00:21:57] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. And that's interesting because to have that come right from Workday is kind of novel. Since the vast majority of the SI, the systems integration ecosystem, has been doing a lot of the deployments. And they have their own accelerators, right? So, I think it's just positive that there are going to be multiple ways that you can get that increased efficiency for your deployment and infuse AI into it.

[00:22:21] [SPEAKER_01] And if it's not through Workday, who's bringing that forward, then, you know, you should certainly expect that through the SI partners that are in their ecosystem. Yeah. You have to think they're proliferating that. Yeah.

[00:22:32] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. So, look, I'd say number eight, Workday is definitely looking beyond, you know, kind of the standard stuff in HR and finance and looking for more connected tissue, if you will, across other areas and opportunities. So, think other use cases. I can't go deep into this. This is some of their big bets. But basically, they're really trying to look across all of the organization and see where they can create that connectivity. So, think about, think of that, I would call it, you know, defriction, right? And experience. Think about the orchestration element.

[00:23:02] [SPEAKER_00] We talk a lot about leaves, right? I pick on that. A lot of that doesn't always sit in HR, right? There's handoffs that go into other areas. I can see that being the kind of thing that Workday is looking to tackle is how do they, some of these adjacencies to the HR and finance experience lean itself to them solving for those use cases as well. So, look for that to branch out beyond, again, across the enterprise, IT, some other areas.

[00:23:26] [SPEAKER_01] That makes me think of, I mean, for a while there was an industry focus, right, for the education sector. And it sounds like it's beyond just an industry focus. That was kind of a hot way to try to approach that for a while. And just looking broadly to fill gaps and find and fill gaps, right?

[00:23:44] [SPEAKER_00] And number nine, probably not news. I mean, Workday is getting more open, right? They want to be able to connect things, integrate, right? They want you to be able to build agents. They want you to be able to build apps and solutions that make sense for you. Obviously, the orchestration and the Workday extend and various connectors that they've provided help with that. And you can see it, right? I mean, we talked about, I think, at Rising EMEA, Kynos had the EU pay transparency solution. So that's obviously a built-on Workday capability by a partner.

[00:24:14] [SPEAKER_00] And there are customers, enterprise customers, who are actually doing those sorts of things, building solutions and agents and capabilities for themselves that fill unique white spaces. Because, look, the reality of it is, is the Workdays of the world can't build absolutely everything. And they want to encourage that, you know, that health of the ecosystem by people, users building into it the pieces and parts that they need. So, yeah.

[00:24:37] [SPEAKER_01] So, Pete, you didn't say the word marketplace, but is that really what we're talking about here? Is some, you know, marketplace?

[00:24:44] [SPEAKER_00] It's more. It's more the marketplace, right? It's just all the various tools that Workday is providing to give you the ability to connect, integrate, build on, extend, develop, and create in a very efficient way the solutions and things that make sense for your world, right? To shape your unique needs. So, yeah.

[00:25:03] [SPEAKER_01] So, beyond tapping into something that somebody else has built and is sharing, right? You could be building your own. You could be building your own. Go back to Sauna, right?

[00:25:12] [SPEAKER_00] That hands-on. It's much easier than ever in a microservices fashion to drag and drop and communicate, chat, what your intent is and get output. And so, again, about Workday being that control point, right? You're building off of that. It's going to be controlling your agents. It's going to be giving them access. It's going to be guardrailing their actions. The governance is there. The data is there. I think this is all. Kind of reminds me of, like, the—like, I always think of the Death Star, you know, in Star Wars or some star base,

[00:25:39] [SPEAKER_00] where you've got ships launching off and coming back and commanders all over the place. You know, I guess the Death Star is kind of ominous, but pick a positive one.

[00:25:47] [SPEAKER_01] I think how timely it's just the resurgence of a million of those showing up in our Netflix, you know, in our Netflix tiles is probably a pretty good reference, Pete.

[00:25:58] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, I do. I think there's going to be a command center, right, where you have to operate all these things and build on and share. And I just think it—yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense. So, all right. Let's last one. Last one. Number 10. Number 10. This went by quicker than I thought it would. The last one, I think we've kind of said a little bit here, but look, HR, payroll, benefits, skills, everything is coming, converging together, very connected, very orchestrated, very chained together, right? I go back to my leaves example I complain about all the time.

[00:26:28] [SPEAKER_00] For so long in the past, so much of that was compartmentalized, right? HR did their part, payroll, benefits. Everybody did their little part, but it didn't really work together. It was a horrible experience for all of us doing it. It's a horrible experience for the employee. I think that's what you're talking about, removing that friction, smoothing out all of that friction, making it more seamless and more of an experience for people. And that is bringing together things like the intelligence around skills, benefits, wellness, payroll comp. You've got so much data swirling now.

[00:26:57] [SPEAKER_00] I think the opportunity to activate all that in concert and start figuring out the signals and the real-time insights that can come from it is certainly what we've been—you know, we've all been craving and talking about in the past. And, you know, we think about something like I said in the beginning. I actually talked to Workday about this. That whole idea I had about real-time, you know, looking at benefits and wellness as a real-time portfolio to be managed. You could see how this is coming together, right?

[00:27:23] [SPEAKER_00] You could see how that could be a possibility in the future with interoperability, with permissions, with agentic capabilities. You could see how you could in real-time manage where people are using benefits appropriately or, you know, and benefits goes beyond our traditional mindset of health and wellness into perks like four-day work weeks and earned wage access. But imagine being able to monitor all that and activate that in context with what your employees are needing. I just think these are the types of things that are going to come together. And who knows?

[00:27:52] [SPEAKER_00] There's probably other use cases out there we haven't even thought of that are, you know, my payroll everywhere concept or some other ideas that are becoming more possible as these solutions open up and get smarter.

[00:28:03] [SPEAKER_01] Well, I think there's a lot to be said there. As you know, you know, I think it was maybe the week after you were out for Innovate for this innovation bit. I was in Pleasanton. My place of employment is super big in the benefits space, right, and benefits administration. And so just having some conversations really explicitly around wellness and what's coming and, you know, what the deal is with Workday Benadmin.

[00:28:26] [SPEAKER_01] I know from my proximity to payroll, you know, I have quite a relationship with Strata, who is one of the providers that will deliver Benadmin processing and administration on top of Workday. One source virtual being the other one, right, that does some of that. And so I feel like, you know, that whole space has, if you're a benefits leader or a total rewards leader, you feel like that's been a bit neglected maybe for years. It's like eight years or more where there's not been tons of innovation in that space.

[00:28:55] [SPEAKER_01] And I feel like by the time we hit fall, and I think ahead of the fall release schedule, there are some pretty exciting things on the roadmap for fall related to benefits, wellness, you know, the touch points to leaves and carriers and insights that drive those types of benefits decisions. So there's an awful lot to come.

[00:29:19] [SPEAKER_01] And I guess I would say if you're, you know, your Workday customer is listening to this because you want to know what else is coming and what's coming next. If you thought that area was dead or, you know, stagnant, and I think you'd be pleasantly surprised to see there's a lot going on there.

[00:29:34] [SPEAKER_01] And we're having lots of conversations right now with Workday users and clients particularly that are just interested in what's coming as they start to plan for their, you know, their future in Benadmin. And pulling in the sticky stuff, you know, we do an awful lot in that messy leave space as well. And you can't touch anything with carriers and CCB, the Cloud Connect for Benefits SKU.

[00:30:01] [SPEAKER_01] I think it's been made public now that that SKU, you know, will be replaced over the next couple of years with Workday Wellness SKU that operates a little bit differently, more API style connections. And so it's just foreshadowing, right? You're foreshadowing for sure everything that's coming up in the fall. And there's an awful lot to talk about there. So I'm excited for all the client conversations that I'm having. I agree.

[00:30:27] [SPEAKER_00] I agree. I feel like all these boring subjects are getting better. Are finally getting attention now, right? Yeah. I have. Just this week I ran into a new benefits solution. I think it's pretty cool. You're right. I've seen more comp solutions coming around. And definitely like we saw some leaves acquisitions recently. Yeah. And certainly that's becoming much more compliance laden. Yeah, there's still so much opportunity to orchestrate. I know that's kind of an overused word.

[00:30:52] [SPEAKER_00] But I love that word because it's just, it's all the in-between stuff that I don't think people realize is where everything breaks down and falls apart. The handoffs. Yeah. When HR has to hand off to someone or vice versa, it just crumbles. And that's where the opportunity is. And so stringing these things together just makes a lot of sense.

[00:31:09] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah.

[00:31:09] [SPEAKER_00] But got to go back to the beginning when we talked about governance and controls and all of that, right? Because if we're using all these solutions, talking to each other and transacting and taking action, someone's got to be governing all of that. That's right. Making sure that it's behaving properly, you know.

[00:31:25] [SPEAKER_01] I think this is just a big point of excitement for HR and payroll listeners, folks that, you know, would be drawn to this podcast. And that is, it isn't just getting bigger and broader outside of your domain where there are exciting things happening. There's plenty of innovation happening within the HR payroll domains themselves. Finance, you know, extend that to finance and others. There's still a lot of great things to be had there and they haven't lost sight of that. So I think we'll see a lot. Yeah.

[00:31:54] [SPEAKER_00] And coming closer together, right? We've talked about how the workforce strategy and planning sort of thing has come. We've seen, you know, examples of that in the market where there's been acquisitions bringing that into HR, closer to HR. So I think it's good. Maybe AI is going to bring the back office together finally. It'll be the thing that finally gets everybody out of their silos. I don't know about. One way or the other.

[00:32:16] [SPEAKER_01] That's right. Well, what we do know is it's technology that will be revolutionary. And as I think Thomas Otter told us on one of our episodes with him, if it's something is revolutionary, you'll know when it's hit its prime because the revolution, you know, doesn't feel like incremental stuff. So.

[00:32:35] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll be, we'll be here to cover it if it does. That's right. Here at HR Payroll 2.0. So. All right. Well, look, Julie, anything else before we wrap this up? No.

[00:32:44] [SPEAKER_01] You know, actually, there's one other thing that I wouldn't have expected would have come up in your innovation. And so that is if folks have, have heard or are wondering what the heck Workday Seismic is. Oh. The Seismic has been launched. And it's actually has to do with the marketplace or the community for the partner ecosystem. Interesting.

[00:33:07] [SPEAKER_01] And, you know, so Workday has grown, you know, and they have great resources available for many different types of partners. There's systems integration partners and advisory and innovation partners and, you know, Vindley partners. There's just tons of different global payroll partners, right? There's lots of different partner ecosystems out there. And I think those resources, you know, had just grown and inherited an old structure, an old framework.

[00:33:34] [SPEAKER_01] And so if you hear Seismic, it's actually, you know, an effort to roll out kind of a new central area command center, right? For that partner ecosystem for Workday. And so it's something that I've had a couple of looks at, you know, we operate in that ecosystem as an independent advisor, not as an SI. And so all the resourcing that's available there.

[00:33:59] [SPEAKER_01] And how do you actually get help or ask questions on behalf of, you know, your client base? Not unlike what users are going through as, you know, they kind of push them into more of a ticketing system for getting help themselves, right? On their issues. And so just know that that term seismic, I thought I would throw that out there just in case anybody had heard it and was wondering what on God's earth is seismic. It's something that the partner ecosystem is using.

[00:34:29] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, very cool. I did not know that. That's good inside baseball. I wasn't aware of that. I don't get on that side of the world as much as you do from the partner lens. So, yeah, very cool.

[00:34:38] [SPEAKER_01] Hey, that's why we do this together, right? I know. I know, right? Because I don't see what you see and sometimes you don't see what I see and we see a whole lot of stuff in the middle.

[00:34:46] [SPEAKER_00] I know. I know. I love it. Well, good, good. All right. Well, that should wrap it up for this week. We'll be back with more content. We've got a lot coming. And as always, subscribe, share, like, whatever you can do. We appreciate it. We'll be back.