Can Workday AI Research Unit Drive Sustainable Enterprise Growth?

Workday, Inc. WDAY has launched Workday AI Research, a dedicated technical research team focused on developing reliable, trustworthy and efficient enterprise artificial intelligence (AI). The initiative aims to address key challenges associated with deploying AI agents across business operations, including memory, accuracy, privacy, explainability and governance.

Workday’s researchers are focusing on key areas such as AI memory, multi-agent collaboration, recommendation systems, AI training and resource optimization. Its research has been accepted at several leading global AI and technology conferences. To further strengthen its research efforts, the company has introduced an AI Research PhD Fellowship that offers $50,000 in annual funding, mentorship and opportunities to collaborate with its researchers.

The company’s recent research found that a selective AI memory system can help agents retain important information while filtering outdated or unreliable data, improving precision by 12%, overall quality by about 8% and speed by around 31%. It also found that multiple specialized AI agents can improve decision-making, increasing accuracy by 5.8% while ensuring responses met defined constraints.

Workday’s research also highlights the need for effective data deletion, as information removed from an AI agent’s memory may remain in previous summaries. The company’s investment in AI research reflects its focus on building reliable, transparent and well-governed AI systems that can improve automation.

How Are Competitors Advancing in Enterprise AI?

Workday faces competition from Oracle Corporation ORCL and Automatic Data Processing, Inc. ADP. Oracle is expanding its enterprise AI efforts through Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and AI-powered Fusion Cloud Applications. The company is adding AI agents to automate workflows and support business operations across finance, HR and supply chain functions. Oracle is bringing Google’s Gemini models to its enterprise applications, giving customers more options for building and deploying AI agents. 

ADP is strengthening its enterprise AI capabilities through ADP Assist, which provides AI agents for HR and payroll functions. The company introduced an AI agent that identifies payroll variances, suggests corrective actions and helps resolve issues before errors occur. ADP is using AI to deliver workforce insights, automate routine tasks and support decision-making while maintaining human oversight and governance.

Workday’s Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates

Workday shares have lost 13.3% over the past year compared with the industry’s decline of 13.5%.

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From a valuation standpoint, Workday trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 4.31, above the industry average of 3.87.

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Earnings estimates for fiscal 2027 have increased 0.6% to $10.81 over the past 60 days, while the same for fiscal 2028 have decreased 0.1% to $12.66.

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Workday currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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