Name: Get Ready for 2026R2 with New Workday Success Plan Features
Uploaded: 2026-09-01T18:30:07.363Z
Duration: 35 min 5 s
Description: Get Ready for 2026R2 with New Workday Success Plan Features

Transcript for "Get Ready for 2026R2 with New Workday Success Plan Features": Alright, folks. Good morning and good afternoon. We'll just wait for everybody to roll on in here. Excited to chat with you all today, but we'll just we'll just wait a few more a few more seconds for everybody to hop on or if they're coming from their their past meeting. Alright. We are one minute after ten, so I will get us going. Excited to chat with you all today about our Workday Success Plans 2026 r '2. This came out August 14, and really excited to chat with you all today. My name is Jordan Poczobutt. I am a Workday Success Plans growth manager, and I get the lovely opportunity to share with you all what happened when within this past release, dig into the components. And then, additionally, in my role, I get to work with our current customers, current WSP customers, and understanding how they continue to utilize the components and taking feedback from them. Just want to acknowledge our official product statement in case we talk about anything forward facing. Always wanna make sure that you're making your purchasing decisions based off of what is currently available in Workday Today. Additionally, before we get started, I'll just cover some housekeeping items. Today's webinar will be recorded. It will be available on demand after this webinar, typically within twenty four hours. And if you wanna watch the recording, you'll just use the same link that you use to register. Additionally, questions are encouraged. We'll save time at the end for reading out the questions out loud, but that that q and a widget is on the right hand side of your screen. So please feel free to put questions in on that side, throughout the webinar. In terms of today's agenda, we have a few polls to start us off, then I'll just provide some brief introductions to WSP, a reminder for those of where it started and where we're currently at today. Then we'll dive into twenty twenty six r two into those different changes and enhancements we've had with WSP and then save time for q and a and resources at the end. So to get us started, we'll have some polls sent out right now. First question being, how much do you know about the WSP release cycle? And then we additionally have the question, if you are a current WSP customer, which, which offering are you on? Which subscription do you have? Being accelerate essentials, accelerate, or accelerate plus. So I'll give some time for for folks to answer those questions. Alright. I see a few of those come in. It looks like we do have a a pretty good mixture of somewhat familiar for our first question, somewhat familiar, and I didn't know WSP had a release cycle, which is great, because that's what we're gonna be talking about today. And then also for those folks, if you are a WSP customer, what subscription do you have? Looks like we have a variety of of folks from Accelerate Essentials, which is our our smallest offering to Accelerate Plus, which is meant for our largest customers. So pretty pretty wide breadth amongst the group today. Before we get into the release cycle, I think it's really important to start off at the beginning of WSP and and why it came to be in the first place, which I know for for some of you, this may be a refresher. So about four years ago, customers were asking questions like, how do I get the most out of my Workday investment? How do I operate with lean teams? How do I continue to keep up with the pace of innovation within Workday and within my organization. And from that, Workday success plans was created to address those challenges. As we move into this new era of AI, Workday success plans is still answering those questions around adoption and self sufficiency, but the questions have evolved a little bit. So customers are now asking questions like the ones you see on the screen here. Right? So what features, agents, apps, and orchestrations are right for my business? How do I deploy and activate these different agents? How do I make sure that my team feels confident in new technology and, of course, keeping up with innovation? And that's where Workday success plans comes in. So we still answer those questions around adoption, self sufficiency, but also now answering those questions around how do I activate agents, how do I make my team feel confident on these different agents and AI within Workday, and, really, within these these three areas. So Workday success plans is going to help you really prepare and plan for these different agents, whether that's going live or activating them, in kind of this middle activate and enable stage. The experts that are involved with Workday success plans are going to help your team feel confident in these new Workday capabilities. And lastly, Workday success plans will help you to continuously optimize the Workday platform with these new innovations and help your team plan for growth. And, really, this is all associated with our release cycle. So as some of you may know, Workday in general has a biannual release cycle every six months. Workday overall comes out with new enhancements to the product. So as WSP, as a part of Workday, we we do this as well. We have a biannual release and make enhancements and refinements to the service based off of customer feedback. And that's what we will be we will be covering today. So this release came out on August 14, and, really, there are are three main pillars to this release. I'm very confident that the enhancements that have been made within this release are going to help you all in this new era of Workday as you are tackling these different questions as we talked about previously. So the first area well, I'll just give a a breadth over what's new and then dive into each of these areas is, enhanced deployment guidance services. So this is a component of Workday success plans that helps with whether you are deploying Workday overall or deploying additional product SKUs. And within DGS, we've made enhancements related to AI, including more coverage for some of our AI SKUs as well as coverage for customers that are going through divestitures. Our second area that we'll be talking about today are our new optimization packages. So optimization packages, these are it's kind of like you're going to the physical therapist. This is where a Workday expert is going to provide advice and recommendations for how to strengthen a certain functional, technical, or organizational area. And we now have an expanded optimization package library that addresses AI agent adoption and also addresses customer feedback from wanting additional product SKUs included in these optimization packages. So we have our functional review on agent activation. We'll dive into that, what that looks like, some of the deliverables from that, and how you all are going to adopt and activate up to three different Workday agents. On the change management side, we have preparing the work for force for AI. So this is an optimization package centered around or organizationally, what what that would look like and recommendations from our experts on the WSP side. And then we now have a functional review on accounting center. This was an area that customers were asking for a functional review on, and this is a a review of that certain area and how to strengthen that certain functional area. And then lastly, today, we'll talk about the overall improved WSP experience, which falls into these three categories on your WSP portal. You'll notice some enhancements, easier to easier streamlines, and and better workflows for you all as customers to make sure that you are adopting and utilizing WSP. We also have new WSP hubs that are focused on Workday build as well as Workday AI agents and features that I'll walk through. And then lastly, we have the new WSP champion role where we have a dedicated liaison on the customer side to help with the usage of WSP. So let's dive into the specifics of all of these new enhancements. So first, starting off with deployment guidance services. So, again, to give just more context into that, like I mentioned before, deployment guidance services, this is where you'll have a deployment success manager, and they will walk you through different sessions, whether you are deploying Workday overall or you're deploying additional product SKUs. You all can utilize DGS whether you are having a partner deployment, Workday is leading your deployment, or you are leading your deployment. And the enhancements that we have made here is we have more tailored content around AI, more tailored discovery questions, to make sure that as you are starting within Workday or just starting within a new product SKU within Workday that you have that strong foundation and also understanding of the different AI feech features and and capabilities. And, really, for you all, this is going to provide more support and also kind of navigate these new changes as deployment approaches. Specifically, this also includes coverage for some of our newer Workday SKUs such as Evisort and Paradox. Those within different DG are gonna be covered within these different DGS sessions. Additionally, as I mentioned before, we have different set sessions that are associated with divestiture scenarios. Because this is a unique deployment type. We wanted to make sure that we were addressing this. So now within the DGS service, we do have sessions and tailored content around customers who are going through divestitures to make sure that you are deploying the the best way for you and also just establishing that overall strong foundation within your deployment because it is a unique deployment type. Moving on to the optimization packages. Our first one is our new functional review on Workday Agent activation. So as I as I mentioned before, optimization package is like that physical therapist, and you're strengthening that certain functional area. So this is going to be around the different Workday Agents and how to activate them. This is available to our accelerate and accelerate plus customers. In order to go through this act this optimization package, you do have to have the UMSA signed and the flex credit agreement signed, and this is the cost of one OP entitlement. So for our accelerate and accelerate plus customers, dependent on what level you'll you have, you'll receive a certain allotment of optimization packages per year, and this would cost one OP entitlement. The benefits of the agent activation OP is that it's going to help you enable that agent system of record, and then you get to choose up to three of those Workday Agents on the screen, sauna, payroll, and planning. There our Workday experts are going to help guide through different test activities and the activation of those agents as you move into production. A really great benefit of this optimization package is that it is very quick compared to other optimization packages. It's a two week engagement. It includes an introduction meeting session on a selected agent, and then the deliverables and recommendations from that. Because we all know that these agents are are coming out really fast, so we want to make sure to accommodate that and provide you all the recommendations as as soon as we can because you are wanting to activate these agents. The deliverables for this optimization package include a security matrix, and some sample test scripts as well. Moving on to our next optimization package, we have preparing the workforce for AI. So this falls more into the change management category in terms of optimization packages. As you all are trying to navigate this this change, we just wanna make sure that you are feeling the the most confident on these different AI capabilities. This is going to be for customers who have been live on Workday for over six months. And then just in terms of what is included, you'll have a planning call, three different sessions, and then a a summary and wrap up of this. I feel that it is a little bit more helpful to actually walk through what that schedule would look like as well as those deliverables. So as I move to the next slide, we'll cover we'll we'll cover those here. So that first session that you have is going to be on AI alignment with your teams, exploring those different AI concepts, capabilities, what you wanna do from them. And then the second session will be identifying those key stakeholders in your Workday AI journey. Next session being the best ways to build that user confidence and proficiency and then that delivery summary of those formalized recommendations and tools so you can continue progressing in your change management. In terms of some of the deliverables, it would look a little bit like this. So you can see here we have our stakeholder identification template. This is gonna go through who is who is the stakeholder in terms of Workday and AI, and how are we going to, make sure that they are up to date and, ready for any of those changes or or new functionalities or features that may come along. And then you'll also see, here on the right hand side just, a different plan for communications and engagement for Workday and AI. Both of these optimization packages are very, very new, but we really did develop these based off of our customer feedback, which were we need help activating these agents, and we need help in educating our workforce on Workday AI. So these two optimization packages specifically address those needs. Then moving to our our next new optimization package, we have our new functional review in accounting center. So if you all are familiar with functional reviews, we have that new one on agent activation as I talked about. But, typically, these are within certain functional areas within Workday. So you would have a functional review on on benefits or security within HCM. So we have a new one on accounting center because our our customers were asking for it. They wanted to have more expertise in this area. So the ideal customer has been, they have deployed accounting center, and they've been live for at least four months. This is going to be an in-depth assessment of accounting center as well as prism configurations. And then in that readout and recommendations call, it would have those those recommendations, really those configuration efforts, as well as how long it would take you to make those configuration efforts, typically broken up into small, medium, or large. The benefits for you all are going to be, of course, that that expert's eyes into accounting center, that in-depth assessment, and really helpful for you all to increase operational efficiency and then really help you as well just make those changes in order to, really see that benefit in that certain functional area as well. Just in general, for these different functional reviews within our optimization packages, our customers can make those changes very, very quickly because all of those recommendations are not only lined out in terms of benefits, pros, and cons, but also efforts in terms of what actually to what actually to fix. Okay. So we've talked a little bit about, we've talked about the enhancements within deployment guidance services. We've talked about our new optimization packages. I'm going to transition to our overall improved WSP experience. So now we have a WSP champion role, and this is going to be your main point of contact within your organizations for Workday success plans. And the reason that we created this new role was because customers were asking, you know, how am I gonna get the most out of my usage? Who would be the ones communicating with my teams? I know you all have your name support contacts and training coordinators. Those roles stay the same, but we have this new role to really help you all continue to utilize the service and take the most advantage of it. So, for the role setup, one to two WSPE champions are going to be recommended. And then in terms of actually what they do, they will be the the one really kind of connecting the dots, so involving the right stakeholders in terms of what components are you utilizing. Are you signed up for this optimization package? They will do a lot of the communication back and forth with the customer success manager as well, and really help you all can continue to use the service. So for just logistics of this, and in case you haven't heard, if you do not have WSP today, what will happen is, your account executive will assign a WSP champion role. If you are a current customer, you, may have heard from your customer success manager or your managing partner. If you have not, the deadline for them assigning a WSP champion is November 30, so you should be hearing from them soon. And all of these roles are being assigned by December 1. So, you know, no no panic. It is an it is a new role. It did just come out August 14, but, you all do not have to to reach out to your customer success manager or managing partner. They will reach out to you. Additionally, in terms of improved WSP experience, we have our new WSP hubs. So if you are a Workday success plans customer and you are on the Workday success plans page on community, you will actually see these, and you'll be able to access them. There's a a tab that has Workday AI and build in that WSP navigation bar. And, really, these are specific pages and journeys for our WSP customer, to help with different resources. And I like to think about it as a I'm wondering about this specific topic. Where do I start? So the different hubs that we have are Workday AI features. So this means that, within this page, it would have what are the new AI features within Workday and, specifically, how would WSP address those? For so for example, if you go to that page, it would have example ask an expert questions that you can that you can use around Workday AI features or different accelerator webinars that you could attend for learning more about Workday AI capabilities. Also, we have a new page on Workday build as well. So any WSP components that aligned with Workday build, it's just similar to that AI features page. You'll be able to see those there. And then, also, we have our Workday AI agents page. So instead of being divided by WSP component, this is divided into the different Workday agents. So, sauna, payroll, deployment agent, and we have some webinars in terms of how to best prepare for those different agents as well. Really helpful for our customers, exclusive to our Workday customers, and overall, a really a really great place to start. So I know that you probably all have lots of questions. I did just talk a lot about the different changes that came out within the past release. So I am gonna head to our q and a and see what questions we have. Okay. So our first question is, what is the cost of optimization packages? What is the expectations for success for customers who are not signed up on Workday or due to budget? Will they be shut out of these features? This is a great question. So the optimization packages, there's not a separate cost for the optimization packages. These are included within Workday success plans. The idea of Workday success plans is that it is a holistic subscription service. So they're not a separate package. I would say for for those of you who may not be Workday customers, our overall Workday success model is still ensuring that you all are are taking advantage of these different agents that are are coming out. So we, as a company, are still addressing these concerns. But just specific to Workday, we have some additional items that can help. But, the so the optimization packages are part of the service, and, that also it it's not just the optimization packages. It's ask an experts. It's accelerator webinars. It's, some of those additional other items that we talked of because we wanna make sure that you're getting the most out of Workday. Okay. What is the best way to access the WSP hubs? Great question. So to access the WSP hubs, if you're a Workday success plans customer, you'll just go to the Workday success plans portal. And let me bring up my slide on community, and then there'll be a tab that says Workday AI and build under there. So you'll access those through there. And then, also, if you just wanted, you could just type into the search bar, Workday Workday AI and build, and and and it would show up. But best to go through your WSP portal on community, and we have that tab. It's the the middle middle ish tab there. Okay. Let's see what else. We have a question around the different levels of WSP that we have. So we have our essentials offering. This is meant for our smaller customers to really, move and solve problems really quickly, typically meant for customers at 2,300 employees or less. Building on top of that, we have Accelerate. This is the offering that we typically see amongst our customers in the medium enterprise space built on top of accelerate with more options for adoption and optimization. And then lastly, we have our accelerate plus offering. This is meant for our largest, Workday customers and also our most strategic ones. For example, if you had a lot of international employees, that builds on top of Accelerate with more, technical and strategic guidance as well. Also, just as a a recommendation to, your account executive will be able to, to show you more in in-depth in terms of what's included in all of those offerings, but, we do have those three today, and it's really based off of customer size and complexity. Okay. Pricing will come from your account manager. So if you have any questions around pricing, that will come from them. Let's see. If you want to add a WSP champion so it looks like there have, also in the in the questions here, if is it fine if I've updated my WSP champion and haven't told my my CSM yet? I best to let your let your CSM know, but they should be the ones reaching out to you for assigning that that WSP champion role. So I think there was a question in here about about how you assign it, and and best to reach out to your CSM. And for those who may have already assigned, best to just let your CSM know. But they should be the ones reaching out for that assignment. Okay. No. There's also a question around the two data sources in accounting center, and I will make sure that we we, follow-up after the webinar to get you that information. Okay. Well, I think those are all the questions that we have for today. So if you have more questions on WSP, I know that there's some questions that I will make sure our team follows up on from this webinar. But feel free to reach out to your account executive to get those questions answered. They'll be able to point you in the right direction. And then if you want to watch the recording, as I mentioned, you'll just access it on demand using the link that you registered with as well. But thank you all for listening. Was super exciting to talk to you all about the different components and enhancements that came out with this release, and excited for you all as continued customers or those who are thinking about Workday Success Plans. Have a lovely afternoon.