Unlocking Business Value in Corporate Finance with Workday with Agentic AI
Any CFO will tell you: automating routine and repetitive workflows has improved accuracy, boosted compliance, reduced costs, and sharpened forecasting. As expectations shift from simply increasing efficiency to driving broader business value, savvy finance leaders have embraced AI wholeheartedly. And Workday has been ready and waiting with AI-powered solutions.
It’s been exciting to watch Workday further integrate artificial intelligence into the nucleus of their SaaS platform, especially with their latest milestone: AI agents in corporate finance. Best of all, these sophisticated systems are designed to not only handle repetitive tasks but also make proactive decisions.
By embedding AI agents into their financial suite, Workday empowers finance teams to anticipate risk, pinpoint inaccuracies, drive strategic decisions, and respond in real time to shifting business needs.
Let’s take a look at how the new generation of AI agents in Workday are transforming corporate finance and how the right enterprise technology partners can help you implement them effectively.
Building the Foundation for AI Agents in Corporate Finance
So, how is Workday transforming their Financial Management module? The short answer is by regularly investing in Workday Illuminate™.
Using one trillion annual transactions across their entire enterprise suite, they have been able to prepare their Illuminate model to reason through the intricate web of accounting and finance workflows. More than just creating features that follow fixed rules, Workday is deploying AI agents that reason, achieve goals, and adapt autonomously to real-world situations.
As we explored in our blog about Workday HCM AI agents, these tools are quickly becoming digital specialists handling certain accounting and finance functions alongside human employees. Through a combination of official Workday, authorized third-party, and custom-built AI agents centered in the Agent System of Record (ASOR), the digital finance workforce continues to scale and boost capabilities.
Practical AI Use Cases for Financial Services
Greater accuracy, faster closes, and smarter forecasting are central goals of Workday Financial Management. By embedding AI in their financial suite, Workday has automated core processes so leaders can focus on driving strategy, reducing risk, and unlocking long-term value.
Employee Payroll
Intelligent automation can flag anomalies in payroll, streamline calculations, and adapt to changing tax laws. Since payroll and HCM are synched together, Workday enables easy collaboration across functions, so every pay period is smoother and more accurate.
Workday Illuminate now allows Workday Payroll users to detect anomalies (through mistakes or fraud) to decrease auditing time for payroll practitioners while increasing accuracy in payroll. This proactive approach not only boosts confidence in payroll data but also helps organizations catch and resolve issues before they impact employee trust or compliance.
Payroll Agent reduces even more of the manual elements of payroll. This AI agent can automate pay inputs (like gift card rewards or equipment reductions) from request and approval through pay slip explanation. Plus, it all comes with a complete audit trail. Better yet, Payroll Agent increases compliance by monitoring and taking actions to remedy missing data or configurations.
Financial Planning and Auditing
Workday Illuminate has the potential to build upon their advances streamlining budgeting, forecasting, and modeling by analyzing real-time data and identifying trends. Integrated into Financial Planning, their AI model can automate the ability to generate forecasts using historical trends and key business metrics as well as detect anomalies and report outliers.
Financial Audit Agent, coming soon to Workday Marketplace, can make your next financial analysis simple. This AI agent will automatically collect evidence from reports and documents, interrogate internal controls, and search for anomalies when audits are requested. This ensures accurate, audit-ready financial statements upon finalization.
Invoicing
Workday is taking the manual grind out of invoicing. With Workday Illuminate, users can scan PDF invoices and automatically convert them into draft entries within Workday. This not only reduces the need for repetitive data entry but also helps ensure accuracy and consistency, improving data integrity and accelerating invoice cycle times.
As generative AI capabilities continue to evolve within the platform, Workday has made it easier than ever to stay on top of receivables. Users can now generate past due notices in seconds, turning what was once a time-consuming administrative task into an automated, scalable process that improves cash flow and client communication.
The recent Workday acquisition of Evisort adds muscle to its invoice management capabilities. By integrating Evisort’s AI-powered document intelligence, Workday can now help teams search, analyze, and act on unstructured invoice data, bringing visibility and control to information that was once difficult to review.
The result? AI in Workday helps finance teams move beyond number-crunching. Enterprise users can unlock sharper forecasting, tighter controls, and the agility to make confident, data-backed decisions at speed.
Tailoring AI Agents to Your Financial Strategy
The finance-focused AI agents in Workday are already delivering measurable value but their true potential lies in how you apply them. Every organization has unique financial processes, reporting needs, and compliance pressures. That’s why Workday offers the flexibility to build, extend, and integrate AI capabilities around your specific goals.
With tools like Workday Extend and the Agent System of Record, your finance team can go beyond out-of-the-box automation and create digital solutions tailored to your workflows. And as Workday continues to evolve its AI offerings (like the upcoming Financial Audit Agent), your team will be equipped to stay agile, data-driven, and ahead of the curve.
As a trusted Workday Services Partner, TEKLEIGH can help you unlock the full power of Workday AI agents in finance. From implementation to customization, we work alongside your team to build smarter systems that support long-term value.
Ready to integrate Workday Finance AI agents into your operations? Schedule a consultation with TEKLEIGH to explore how our implementation experts can help you unlock smarter workflows, tighter controls, and faster insights.