More output isn’t better business: Workday’s CFO Zane Rowe on how finance chiefs should really measure AI

Good morning. For Workday CFO Zane Rowe, the promise of AI isn’t just about automating tasks. It’s about giving employees the freedom to rethink how they work, uncover new insights, and add more value to the business.

Rowe recently reviewed a list of 10 AI agents being developed by his tax team to improve how employees work. Not every agent will make the cut. But the projects offer a glimpse into how the enterprise software company is exploring agentic AI internally, he told me.

Workday’s finance transformation team is part of that strategy. The group works with the company’s research and development and business technology teams to test its own products and explore other technologies. It also engages with customers to exchange feedback and learn how finance organizations are adopting AI, he said.Workday puts AI agents to work across finance

Rowe sees two major opportunities: improving business insights and redesigning processes from end to end.

On the first front, Workday is expanding Decision Intelligence beyond Adaptive across its portfolio to HR and finance. The tool helps finance teams understand what’s driving business performance, test different scenarios, and assess the potential impact on the company, he said. 

For example, finance teams can model what would happen if they hired more or fewer people in certain parts of the world or in particular business areas, then forecast the impact on the company, Rowe said.

“It’s a whole way of identifying how we think about planning; it’s not just forecasting,” he said.

At its annual Rising event last week, Workday also announced new “autopilot agents” designed to........

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