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U.S. enterprises are significantly broadening their reliance on the Workday platform, moving beyond its traditional role as a Human Resources (HR) system of record to a foundational pillar for comprehensive financial, operational, and workforce agility, according to a new 2025 ISG Provider Lens® Workday Ecosystem report for the U.S. This transformation is driven by the acceleration of finance modernization, the practical application of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and a strategic shift toward skills-based talent management. The report finds that as organizations seek real-time insights and greater flexibility, Workday is becoming deeply embedded in strategic decision-making across the enterprise.
The Workday platform is evolving from a primary HR system into a strategic, enterprise-wide foundation for finance, operations, and workforce management in the U.S.
Finance modernization is accelerating, with companies adopting Workday Financial Management to replace legacy systems, enabling real-time insights for better planning and analysis.
The growing deployment of Workday for financial strategy is significantly elevating the role of the CFO in broader modernization initiatives.
U.S. organizations are moving past AI experimentation to the practical application of AI and Machine Learning (ML) within Workday to automate workflows and enhance forecasting.
Agentic AI, which performs multi-step tasks like candidate sourcing and scheduling, is an emerging, practical use case that reduces administrative workload.
Enterprises are actively moving to skills-based talent strategies using features like Workday Skills Cloud to map capabilities, predict future needs, and build internal marketplaces for improved agility and talent retention.
The 2025 ISG Provider Lens® Workday Ecosystem report for the U.S. highlights a new stage of maturity in Workday adoption. Enterprises are applying the platform to a wider array of business functions, recognizing its potential to deliver financial visibility, workforce transformation, and innovation. This evolution positions Workday as a core system for managing both people and money. The platform’s open and extensible ecosystem, supported by tools like Workday Extend and the Workday Marketplace, is providing organizations with greater flexibility to build customized solutions and integrate diverse services.
Transformations within Workday are increasingly being driven by financial management needs across U.S. organizations. Companies are actively replacing older, inflexible financial systems with Workday Financial Management to achieve critical operational benefits. This shift is not merely an IT upgrade; it is a strategic move to acquire real-time financial insights and enhance planning and analysis capabilities. This real-time, trusted data, Workday is becoming a deeper part of the strategic decision-making process, which, in turn, is helping to elevate the CFO’s role into a more central figure in enterprise-wide modernization.
The report indicates that U.S. enterprises are transitioning the use of AI within Workday from theoretical experimentation to practical, production-ready application. Organizations are using embedded AI and Machine Learning capabilities to automate mundane workflows, streamline the talent acquisition process, and create more accurate operational forecasts. A key emerging trend is the application of Agentic AI. These agents are designed to autonomously execute complex, multi-step tasks—such as sourcing and scheduling candidates—which dramatically reduces administrative overhead for HR and recruiting teams. This wave of AI adoption is also creating significant demand for services to help companies properly implement these features and ensure they have clean, structured data to guarantee the reliability of the AI outputs.
In response to rapidly changing business environments and ongoing skills gaps, companies are moving away from rigid, job-based roles to more flexible, skills-based talent strategies. The report emphasizes that organizations are leveraging Workday features to transform their approach to workforce management. Specifically, the Workday Skills Cloud is utilized to map the current capabilities of the workforce, predict future skill demands, and facilitate the creation of internal marketplaces to match employees with opportunities. This approach is instrumental in improving organizational agility, closing critical skills gaps, and enhancing employee retention by fostering internal growth. Furthermore, Workday’s consumer-grade engagement features contribute to this shift by offering employees personalized digital journeys.
The new ISG report confirms that the Workday platform is central to the digital transformation agenda for U.S. enterprises, serving as a unified system for strategic finance, AI-driven operations, and agile, skills-based workforce management. This expanded role leverages the platform’s core capabilities to deliver financial visibility and operational flexibility, enabling organizations to adapt quickly to evolving market demands.
Information Services Group (ISG) is a leading global technology research and advisory firm. A trusted business partner to more than 900 clients, including more than 75 of the world’s top 100 enterprises, ISG is committed to helping corporations, public sector organizations, and service and technology providers achieve operational excellence and faster growth. The firm specializes in digital transformation services, including automation, cloud and data analytics; sourcing advisory; managed governance and risk services; network carrier services; technology strategy and operations design; change management; market intelligence and technology research and analysis.
Workday is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, helping customers adapt and thrive in a changing world. Workday applications for financial management, human resources, planning, spend management, and analytics are built with AI at the core and currently used by thousands of organizations around the world and across industries—from medium-sized businesses to more than 50% of the Fortune 500.
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