I recently attended Workday’s September 2025 Rising conference. At the event, the company celebrated its twentieth anniversary and showcased its AI platform strategy, new consumption model, and expanding ambitions in the SMB market. From its approach to AI governance and open data, to the launch of AI Flex Credits and Workday GO for midmarket and SMB customers, the throughline was clear: Workday aims to be the platform for managing people, money, and AI agents—and to make that platform as compelling for midmarket and SMB organizations as it is for large enterprises.
Agentic AI and Workday’s Differentiation in AI Governance and Data Strategy
Workday’s overarching message centers on the belief that AI should augment, not replace, human workers. This “AI-powered, human-centric, future-ready” vision reflects how the company sees the “new work day”: a world where agents, data, and people collaborate to get work done intelligently, responsibly, and efficiently.
Executives outlined the four pillars of Workday’s AI approach:
- A unified AI platform embedded across HR, finance, and planning.
- Domain-specific data and context, drawn from curated, structured enterprise data.
- Responsible and trustworthy AI, with governance, transparency, and bias mitigation built in.
- An open, extensible platform that customers and partners can use to co-create.
They discussed how this framework translates into real-world agentic AI offerings. Workday’s Illuminate AI agents, for example, can automate complex workflows such as performance reviews, financial close, and planning. Unlike general-purpose chatbots, these agents are context-aware, operating within governed Workday data environments where security, accuracy, and explainability are paramount.
Workday debuted Workday Build for developers, built with Flowise, which Workday acquired earlier this year. It’s new low-code Flowise AgentBuilder enables customers to create, deploy, and manage custom AI agents directly within Workday. The Flowise Agent empowers HR and finance leaders—even without coding expertise—to build role-specific assistants that collaborate across processes.
Workday also announced integrations with Microsoft Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry, allowing customers to register and manage Microsoft-built agents inside Workday’s Agent System of Record. This creates a single governance layer for all enterprise agents and positions Workday as an agent governance hub.
Workday’s new Data Cloud, developed with Databricks, Snowflake, and Salesforce, fuels these agents. It provides direct, real-time, zero-copy access to HR and finance data—keeping it secure while enabling bi-directional flow for analysis and action. The goal: break down data silos that limit AI value.
Workday AI Flex Credits: Aligning Costs with Value and Use
Workday introduced AI Flex Credits, a new pricing model that ties AI consumption directly to customer value and use. Designed to make AI access more predictable and affordable, this model evolves Workday’s licensing from static to usage-based, reflecting how customers actually engage with AI-driven processes.
Executives described Flex Credits as a way for customers to track ROI more transparently, while creating a recurring revenue stream for Workday that’s tied to real outcomes. It’s a step toward embedding AI not just in Workday’s technology—but in its commercial DNA.
Workday’s SMB Strategy and Workday GO
At Rising 2025, Workday hosted a dedicated “GO for Growth Summit” focused on SMBs. The sessions highlighted SMBs’ unique challenges and growth goals, and spotlighted Workday GO, the company’s offering for smaller and midsize organizations with fewer than 3,500 employees.
Speakers noted that many SMBs still rely on disconnected HR, payroll, and finance systems, which creates friction and hinders growth. Workday GO addresses this pain point with a unified platform that delivers an integrated view of the business and serves as a foundation for AI and automation.
Rather than a standalone product, Workday GO is a strategic framework designed to move SMBs from initial deployment to long-term partnership. The approach emphasizes small, predictable Phase 1 activations that establish a foundation for incremental expansion—turning early adopters into “customers for life.”
Workday structures GO round three phases:
- Activate: Go live in as little to 30 to 60 days using preconfigured processes, security, and workflows
- Adopt: Configure and evolve with minimal IT support
- Grow: Expand functionality as business needs evolve
The product-led, partner-driven GO model emphasizes speed, affordability, and scalability—a stark contrast to the “big, heavy” ERP deployments typical of the past.
Three Workday GO customers, each with between with 70–100 employees, shared their results:
- Raven Aerospace cut payroll processing time from two weeks to two days after moving to Workday.
- EMD, a Workday consulting firm operating across three countries, went live in just six weeks.
- Outlaw Group, a seasonal tourism business, deployed Go in eight weeks with a single internal lead, streamlining labor tracking and cost visibility.
Each story underscored the same outcome: rapid deployment, automation at scale, and measurable time savings—all critical to SMB success.
Workday’s GO strategy is also partner-friendly, supporting repeatable sales and long-term managed service relationships. The company expects GO to be a major driver of its growth strategy.
Perspective
Workday’s 20th anniversary marks an inflection point. The company is evolving from a provider of cloud-based enterprise applications to an AI-powered platform for intelligent business execution, and not just for large enterprises.
Key takeaways:
- Depth, trust, and usability are central to Workday’s differentiation. Its “AI agents that understand your business” mantra captures both its advantage and its challenge: success hinges on how quickly customers can operationalize that intelligence and reap its benefits.
- AI Flex Credits show Workday’s intent to weave AI into its pricing and go-to-market fabric. Expect these credits to become a strategic flywheel connecting product packaging, partner models, and customer engagement.
- Workday GO opens a vast growth opportunity. With its under 60-day activation promise and focus on simplicity and scale, Go could appeal strongly to midmarket buyers wary of generative AI risks and traditional ERP complexity.
However, Workday still must overcome perceptions that it’s built only for large enterprises. Competing with entrenched midmarket players such as NetSuite, Sage, and Acumatica will require Workday to go the extra mile to demonstrate both affordability and fast ROI.
And while its “AI for humans” narrative resonates, SMBs are still early in their AI journey. To drive adoption, Workday must provide training, diagnostics, and ROI measurement tools that build confidence and clarify business value.
In short, the opportunity is massive, but execution will define the outcome. Workday’s challenge is balancing enterprise-grade depth and trust with the SMB market’s demand for simplicity, affordability, and speed, all while maintaining momentum in the AI innovation race.
©SMB Group. 2025