Salesforce and Workday have announced a strategic partnership that introduces a new AI-powered employee service agent. This agent, integrating Salesforce’s Agentforce Platform and Einstein AI with Workday’s extensive HR and financial solutions, is designed to automate and enhance various employee service tasks such as onboarding, managing health benefits, and career development.
This AI employee service agent will significantly improve workplace efficiency by providing personalised support and data-driven insights. It operates on a unified data platform that combines Salesforce CRM data with Workday’s HR and financial data, enabling it to interact with employees in a more intuitive and human-like manner. This capability extends from handling routine inquiries to assisting with complex problem resolutions.
Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO of Salesforce, expressed his enthusiasm about the new partnership and the capabilities of the AI service agent. “The AI opportunity for every company lies in augmenting their employees and delivering incredible customer experiences,” said Benioff. “That’s why we’re so excited about our new Agentforce platform which enables humans and AI to drive customer success together, and this new partnership with Workday, to jointly build an employee service agent. Together we’ll help businesses create amazing experiences powered by generative and autonomous AI, so every employee can get answers, learn new skills, solve problems, and take action quickly and efficiently.”
Seamless integration for a holistic employee experience
The partnership also includes native integration of Workday within Slack, facilitating deeper automation and enhanced collaborative interactions concerning worker, job, candidate, and similar records using AI. This strategic move aims to streamline workflows and make data access more straightforward, thereby simplifying and improving the efficiency of employee interactions with corporate systems.
Carl Eschenbach, CEO of Workday, also commented on the integration and the potential it holds for transforming employee and customer experiences. “Employees, customers, and financials are the three most fundamental elements of any business,” said Eschenbach. “By integrating our platforms, datasets, and powerful AI capabilities, Salesforce and Workday are empowering our customers to deliver unmatched AI-powered employee experiences that ultimately lead to happier customers and drive unprecedented business value.”
The collaboration includes building a shared data foundation on Salesforce Data Cloud and Workday, which will allow secure and efficient data sharing across the platforms. This enables employees to access and manipulate HR, financial, and CRM data seamlessly, without redundant processes or custom integrations.
Broad benefits for employees and businesses
The AI employee service agent not only simplifies interactions but also provides substantial benefits to employees through natural language communication. It can understand and respond to employee inquiries, pull relevant information and insights from the integrated Workday-Salesforce data sources, and execute actions across platforms.
This AI functionality will support various employee services, such as:
- Seamless Onboarding: Streamlining paperwork, resource provisioning, and training to get new hires up to speed more quickly.
- Self-Service HR: Providing answers to queries about paid time off, benefits, and policies, and facilitating transactions like healthcare plan updates.
- Continuous Development: Offering tailored learning paths based on an employee’s role, skills, and career aspirations, tracked within Workday.
For employers, this integration will enhance workforce planning and financial forecasting by combining real-time data from both platforms, thus improving decision-making and operational efficiencies across the board.
This groundbreaking partnership between Salesforce and Workday is poised to redefine the standard for employee experiences in the workplace, leveraging advanced AI to boost both individual productivity and overall business performance.
