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Salesforce and Workday have announced a strategic partnership aimed at delivering a personalised, AI-powered assistant for various employee service use cases, including onboarding, health benefits, and career development. This collaboration introduces an AI employee service agent designed to automate routine tasks, provide tailored support, and offer data-driven insights to enhance employee productivity.
The new AI employee service agent will leverage Salesforces new Agentforce Platform and Einstein AI alongside Workday's platform and AI capabilities. This combination aims to unify HR and financial data from Workday with CRM data from Salesforce. The shared data foundation will facilitate communication between employees and the AI agent in natural language, helping to simplify actions such as health benefit changes and career development.
When complex issues arise, the AI employee service agent will transfer cases to the appropriate human agent while maintaining all previous context and history. This integration aims to increase productivity and efficiency by enabling smooth transitions between AI and human agents. The data, AI models, and applications are deeply integrated to achieve this seamless interaction.
Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO of Salesforce, commented on the partnership, saying, "The AI opportunity for every company lies in augmenting their employees and delivering incredible customer experiences. 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."
Workday’s CEO, Carl Eschenbach, added, "Employees, customers, and financials are the three most fundamental elements of any business. 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."
Three primary aspects of this partnership are the AI employee service agent, a shared data foundation, and seamless integration between Workday and Slack. The AI employee service agent, powered by the Einstein 1 Platform and Workday AI, will use large language models (LLMs) to communicate naturally and provide relevant, conversational responses to employee queries. This agent will act on behalf of employees, recommending actions across platforms and escalating issues to humans when necessary.
The integration will create a shared data foundation using Salesforce Data Cloud and Workday, linking Workday financial and HR data with Salesforce CRM data through the Salesforce Zero Copy Partner Network. This will enable customers to access and act upon financial, HR, and CRM data across both platforms without data duplication or custom integrations.
Workday will also enhance its existing integration with Slack, offering a conversational interface for tasks related to pay, job requisitions, employee details, and general ledgers directly within Slack. This integration will ensure that conversations about these records are preserved, making it easy to find, summarise, and act on information in Workday.
Sal Companieh, Chief Digital and Information Officer of Cushman & Wakefield, expressed optimism about the partnership, stating, "As a leading global commercial real estate services firm, we are extremely focused on ensuring our employees are supported and engaged, which has a direct impact on client service. The ability to streamline workflows across two of our most used platforms—Workday and Salesforce—and deliver more personalised AI-powered employee experiences will be a game changer for us."
This partnership aims to extend workforce capability beyond individual productivity, harnessing AI to optimise overall workforce intelligence and resilience. By integrating HR, financial, and operational data into advanced AI models, the collaboration aspires to enhance planning, financial forecasting, and sales enablement.
R Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research, offered his perspective on the integration, noting, "The integration of business processes and data is one of the top concerns among C-level execs in an age of AI. Companies will be hard-pressed to find any one vendor or partnership that can offer visibility across customer, employee, and financial data—until now. The shared data foundation between Workday and Salesforce will enable these partners to deliver AI capabilities that could completely transform the employee experience to be more personalised, efficient, and impactful—translating to increased business performance across the board."
