Diving overview:
- Enterprise software giant Workday on Wednesday announced the launch of new artificial intelligence capabilities aimed at streamlining financial planning and analysis workflows.
- The new feature, called Adaptive Decision Intelligence, is designed to extend the company’s Adaptive Planning platform and enable teams to ask questions in natural language, pull in data from multiple enterprise systems, and perform scenario analysis in minutes.
- “Ultimately, what we’re trying to do for our users is make their lives easier, make them more productive, and allow them to focus on more strategic work instead of just looking at data or trying to integrate spreadsheets,” Ben Pearce, general manager of Workday Adaptive Planning, said in an interview.
Dive Insight:
Enterprise software vendors are increasing efforts to incorporate AI into corporate finance and other business functions.
Last week, OneStream announced that it is expanding its agent AI capabilities to enable interoperability with third-party systems such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot. Earlier this month, SAP introduced an AI suite for a wide range of corporate finance functions, including cash management, tax, planning, and billing.
Workday said its latest tools are aimed at addressing core challenges in FP&A. That means teams often spend days retrieving data from disconnected systems, slowing down analysis efforts.
“Currently, planning and analysis has become a fragmented process, whereas we have a managed planning environment that supports budgets, forecasts, and reporting, where structure, control, and an audit trail are essential,” the company said in a press release. “On the other hand, there are ad hoc tasks and urgent requests that often reside in one-off spreadsheets built to answer urgent questions, test new ideas, or combine data that has not yet been modeled.”
Pearce said Workday isn’t positioning the new features as a complete replacement for spreadsheets, arguing that tools like Microsoft Excel will likely remain part of financial workflows even as companies automate more analysis and data preparation tasks.
“I think people have said many times over the years, ‘We’re going to take people out of Excel,’ but I don’t think that’s ever going to happen,” he said. “Excel has its place. I use Excel all the time, but I think this will allow me to work much faster without having to use Excel for the complex analysis I need.”
Workday says the new feature is designed to run scenario models and incorporate approved decisions directly into forecasts and plans by leveraging data from the Adaptive Planning platform combined with other sources such as customer relationship management and human resources systems.
Among other examples in the release, if a region misses its goals, finance leaders can combine adaptive planning performance and plans with that region’s sales pipeline and staffing data to determine whether the problem is due to weak sales coverage, low conversion rates, or decreased productivity.
The feature builds on Workday’s existing security and permissions framework to maintain auditability and access controls, according to the release. The tool is currently available through an early adopter program and is expected to become more widely available later this year, the company said.
