Workday Brings Decision Intelligence to HR and Finance, Helping Teams Weigh Workforce and Financial Decisions Together
October 13, 2026
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News Release Issued: Oct 13, 2026 (9:00am EDT)
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Workday Brings Decision Intelligence to HR and Finance, Helping Teams Weigh
Workforce and Financial Decisions Together
Video(1)
Workday Decision Intelligence Replaces Spreadsheets and Guesswork with a
Single, Governed AI Experience for HR and Finance
Teams Can Model Different Business Scenarios Across HR and Finance, Make
Critical Decisions and Take Action with Confidence
LAS VEGAS, Oct. 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Workday Rising 2026 - Workday,
Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY), the trusted agentic platform for HR, finance, and IT,
today announced Workday Decision Intelligence is now available across its
portfolio, giving HR and finance teams a single, governed AI experience that
works the way an in-house analyst would: with seamless, secure access to the
people, financial, and planning data already governed in Workday. Teams can
ask a question in plain language, get an answer grounded in live data instead
of a static export, compare options, and take action based on existing Workday
permissions.
When HR and finance teams need to evaluate a hiring plan, explain a margin
shift, or respond to a change in the business, they need workforce and
financial data they can trust - and that data rarely lives in one place. Too
often, getting that answer means downloading data out of separate HR and
finance systems into spreadsheets, working from offline exports that are out
of date as soon as they're pulled, and manually stitching together numbers
because the two systems were never connected to begin with. By the time teams
are ready to act, the data is stale, the access controls are unclear, and
nobody can agree on which version of the numbers is right. Decision
Intelligence solves this by giving HR and finance teams a single agentic
experience with secure access to the same live, trusted data.
"Decision Intelligence is one of the most meaningful advances we've seen in
Workday," said James Choi, global head of finance transformation &
procurement, Unity Technologies. "It is already helping us close the gap
between analysis and execution, from quickly investigating revenue variances
to streamlining the monthly post-close outlook deck we build for our CFO.
Because it works within Workday's security model and understands our ledger,
cost center, and company hierarchies, our teams can move faster without losing
the business context they rely on."
Decision Intelligence first helped financial planning and analysis (FP&A)
teams in Adaptive from Workday move quickly from analysis to action. Workday
is now extending it to more of the business, from team design, skills gaps,
and hiring strategy to close variances, reconciliation, and flux analysis
during close.
"Leaders are under pressure to make more complex decisions in less time, but
speed only matters if teams can understand the full impact of the path they
choose," said Ben Pierce, general manager, Adaptive from Workday. "With
Workday Decision Intelligence, HR and finance teams can evaluate workforce and
financial trade-offs together, then move approved actions forward through the
data, permissions, and business processes that already run the enterprise."
For HR, Workforce Planning That Looks Beyond Headcount
Workday Decision Intelligence for HR helps HR leaders, business partners, and
workforce planners make decisions about people, skills, teams, and
organizational health with the full costs, timing, and risk in view.
Teams can ask questions about workforce supply and demand, organization
design, attrition risk, recruiting plans, and skills gaps. They can then
compare strategies, such as hiring externally, building internal talent, using
contingent labor, adjusting timelines, or investing in retention, and see the
cost, timing, and risk of each. Recommended actions go to the right
decision-makers with the trade-offs already laid out.
For example, if a workforce plan calls for 50 new hires, HR can ask whether
the business still needs all 50 based on the work being done, where skills
already exist, where capacity is underused, and how the plan affects cost.
Leaders can compare options using current workforce data instead of static
reports or manually piecing together information. Once a strategy is approved,
teams can act on it directly in Workday, keeping people decisions grounded in
trusted data, existing approvals, and human oversight. Over time, HR can see
which workforce strategies actually delivered, so the next decision starts
from what worked, not from scratch.
For Finance, From Understanding What Changed to What to Do Next
Workday Decision Intelligence for Finance helps FP&A and accounting teams
understand what changed, evaluate options, and decide how to respond, whether
it's performance, profitability, or financial health.
Teams can explore questions about revenue changes, margin pressure, cost
trends, forecast variance, and balance sheet movement across different
dimensions. Finance leaders can trace changes to the underlying drivers,
compare actions such as adjusting investment timing, reallocating budget, or
revisiting assumptions and route recommendations through the right controls
and approvals.
For example, if revenue is growing but margin is shrinking, finance teams can
ask what changed and why and can compare options before deciding what to do
next. Instead of recreating analysis in spreadsheets, teams can investigate,
model scenarios, and act on governed financial and planning data in Workday,
with a clear record of the assumptions, approvals, and actions behind every
decision. That record becomes a feedback loop: finance can see which responses
to a variance actually improved the outcome and apply that the next time a
similar shift happens.
Availability
Workday Decision Intelligence is now available to Workday Human Capital
Management (HCM) and Workday Financial Management customers. Decision
Intelligence for Adaptive continues to be available to Adaptive from
Workday customers.
For More Information
Learn how Workday's Autopilot Agents get real work done across HR, Finance,
and IT.Read about how Sana brings the agentic experience to every
employee.Register and attend Workday Rising sessions in the digital
program:Decide Faster, Decide Better: AI and the Road to Agentic Finance
[26-KEY5], Oct. 13 at 11:00am PT.Decision Intelligence: AI-driven Strategic
Insights with Adaptive from Workday [26-PLLP1920], Oct. 14 at 12:00pm PT.
About Workday
Workday operates at the heart of the enterprise - HR, finance, and IT -
where the margin for error is effectively zero. By tightly coupling AI with
the context, guardrails, and trusted processes that run the business, Workday
goes beyond AI that assists work to agents that are capable of driving
measurable outcomes. More than 11,500 organizations worldwide, including more
than 65% of the Fortune 500, trust Workday to deliver. For more information
about Workday, visit workday.com.
© 2026 Workday, Inc. All rights reserved. Workday and the Workday logo are
trademarks of Workday, Inc. All other brand and product names are trademarks
or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
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SOURCE Workday Inc.
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