Good morning. For Workday CFO Zane Rowe, the promise of AI isn’t just about automating tasks. It’s about giving employees the freedom to rethink how they work, uncover new insights, and add more value to the business.
Rowe recently reviewed a list of 10 AI agents being developed by his tax team to improve how employees work. Not every agent will make the cut. But the projects offer a glimpse into how the enterprise software company is exploring agentic AI internally, he told me.
Workday’s finance transformation team is part of that strategy. The group works with the company’s research and development and business technology teams to test its own products and explore other technologies. It also engages with customers to exchange feedback and learn how finance organizations are adopting AI, he said.
Workday puts AI agents to work across finance
Rowe sees two major opportunities: improving business insights and redesigning processes from end to end.
On the first front, Workday is expanding Decision Intelligence beyond Adaptive across its portfolio to HR and finance. The tool helps finance teams understand what’s driving business performance, test different scenarios, and assess the potential impact on the company, he said.
For example, finance teams can model what would happen if they hired more or fewer people in certain parts of the world or in particular business areas, then forecast the impact on the company, Rowe said.
“It’s a whole way of identifying how we think about planning; it’s not just forecasting,” he said.
At its annual Rising event last week, Workday also announced new “autopilot agents” designed to automate routine workflows across accounting, payroll, and hiring; an expanded “Trusted Agent Platform” for building and deploying custom AI agents; and a new partnership with Anthropic to connect their platforms and agentic experiences.
The announcements come as Workday, a Fortune 500 company, enters a new chapter under co-founder Aneel Bhusri, who reclaimed the CEO role in February and began what the company calls its “refounding” chapter. “Great companies are not built on one generation of technology. They pass the test of time,” Bhusri told Fortune’s Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell on the latest episode of the Fortune 500 Titans podcast.
Why AI’s value goes beyond efficiency
As CFOs become key strategic partners to CEOs in shaping AI strategy, I asked Rowe how he measures the success of AI investments.
“I always hear people talk about ROI, and I think it’s so much more than that,” he said.
Rowe described an outcome-based approach to measuring AI’s impact. ROI remains important, but success is ultimately defined by better work, stronger decisions, greater organizational capacity, and improved customer value.
For example, AI might enable a finance team to generate twice as many reports, but that alone doesn’t necessarily make the business better, he explained. A more meaningful measure is whether the team can use AI to uncover insights, anticipate problems, advise business leaders, and improve decisions.
The shift he describes moves people away from simply producing information and toward using it to drive the business forward.
“CFOs are leaning in on: How do we make sure the teams are motivated and engaged?” he said. “It’s not just about finding efficiencies. It’s about people actually doing the work that they thought they were going to do when they signed up to join a company.”
Sheryl Estrada
Sheryl.Estrada@fortune.com
Leaderboard
Samantha L. Stoddard was appointed VP, CFO and treasurer of Standex International Corporation (NYSE: SXI), a manufacturer of engineered components and systems, effective Dec. 1. Stoddard joins Standex from JELD-WEN Holding, Inc., where she currently serves as EVP and CFO. She will succeed Ademir Sarcevic, who was promoted to EVP, corporate and group president of electronics, as previously announced in May. Sarcevic will remain CFO until Stoddard assumes her new role.
Zach Kirkman was appointed CFO of Mach Industries, a defense manufacturer. Kirkman brings nearly two decades of experience in financial leadership. Most recently, he served as deputy CFO at General Motors, reporting directly to the CFO and overseeing treasury, corporate development, GM Ventures, and long-term financial planning and analysis. Previously, he helped establish and lead Tesla’s corporate development function. He began his career at Apple, where he held several finance roles, including one in corporate development.
Big Deal
The Conference Board’s new report highlights how AI is transforming leadership and the workplace. Based on a survey of 775 leaders and 20 interviews, the findings reveal that while AI adoption is widespread, many organizations still lack clear accountability for AI-related decisions, and leaders face growing challenges in maintaining quality, sound judgment, and employee development amid increased productivity demands.
The report also anticipates significant changes to middle management and frontline leadership, with a shift toward more collaborative and distributed leadership models. Ultimately, the report emphasizes that successful AI integration requires more than adopting new technology; it demands a fundamental rethink of leadership, workforce development, and organizational accountability.
Going deeper
“Nike’s turnaround is stalling, and its Converse brand is a big reason why” is an article by Fortune’s Phil Wahba.
Wahba writes: “Converse makes up just 2.5% of Nike’s sales. Last quarter, it accounted for 20% of the company’s sales decline. Two years into Elliott Hill’s tenure as Nike’s CEO, the 118-year-old maker of the Chuck Taylor is a big drag on a comeback that isn’t coming together, with Converse sales down 28% in the most recent quarter and analysts openly wondering whether Nike will keep it in its portfolio.” Read more here.
Overheard
“I think what more than a decade of that data points to is a narrower, more useful question than the one hiring has been asking. The question was never really, ‘Can this person get this job?’ It’s, ‘Is this a place where this person is likely to do well?’”
—Owen Humphries, president of Glassdoor, writes in a Fortune opinion piece.