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means downloading data out of separate HR and finance systems into spreadsheets, working from offline exports that are out of date as soon as they're pulled, and manually stitching together numbers because the two systems were never connected to begin with.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.
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SOURCE Workday Inc.
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