Workday's launch of two new agentic AI tools for IT and travel marks a direct challenge to established players and a core part of its strategy to survive the AI era.
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Workday targets ServiceNow with 2 new AI agents for IT and travel
(Bloomberg) -- Workday Inc. is expanding beyond its core finance and human resources software into IT services, launching two new artificial intelligence agents that take direct aim at the market dominated by ServiceNow Inc.
"Are we going to overtake ServiceNow day one? No,” Workday Chief Executive Aneel Bhusri said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “But we thought, ‘Why not us? We have this incredible platform in Sana, so why don’t we do the agentic workflows as well?’”
Announced Thursday at the Sana AI Summit in New York, the new products are Sana for IT Service Management (ITSM) and a new Travel Agent. Sana for ITSM is designed to automate employee IT support, from onboarding new hires to handling routine software requests, by using the rich employee data already stored within Workday’s platform. The Travel Agent aims to consolidate trip planning, booking, and expensing into a single conversational flow, automatically generating expense reports for policy-compliant bookings. Workday processes more than 5 million expense reports each month.
The move is a central piece of Bhusri’s strategy to navigate the AI era. The co-founder, who returned to the CEO role in February, is fighting investor concerns that have seen Workday (NASDAQ: WDAY) stock fall about 40 percent this year amid fears that AI-native startups could make traditional enterprise software obsolete. The expansion puts Workday (market cap $75B) in direct competition with ITSM leader ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW), which has a market cap of approximately $150B.
A Re-founding Moment for the AI Era
Bhusri described the current period as a "re-founding moment" for the company, requiring it to operate with the agility of a startup. Upon his return, he consolidated the company's AI agent development, cutting the number of projects from 50 to about 20 to "focus on the ones that really matter," he told the Journal. This focus is intended to demonstrate value and drive adoption of AI add-ons, which are already included in more than three-quarters of Workday's new deals.
The new ITSM agent is a prime example of this strategy. It leverages Workday's position as the system of record for employee data—roles, reporting structures, and permissions—to orchestrate tasks across different systems. When an employee is hired or changes roles, the agent can automatically trigger access changes, provision equipment, and route complex requests, reducing the manual workload for IT and HR departments. "Workday already holds the organizational truth that makes that possible," said Joel Hellermark, Workday's chief AI officer.
From Expense Reports to Travel Booking
The new Travel Agent addresses a different kind of enterprise friction. While Workday already processes 10 million active expense users, the booking of travel and the subsequent expensing have remained separate, often cumbersome, processes. The agent brings them together.
"The best expense report is the one you never have to do," said Max Wessel, a senior vice president of product at Workday. The agent allows employees to coordinate schedules, book flights and hotels that comply with company policy, and then automatically creates the expense report once the travel is approved. This provides finance teams with real-time visibility into committed spending and frees employees from manually compiling receipts and reports.
Expanding the ‘Workday’
This expansion reflects a broader ambition to automate the ancillary tasks that surround an employee's main job functions. "Just doing HR and finance, in my view, is not ambitious enough," Jerry Ting, Vice President and Head of Agentic AI, told SiliconANGLE. The company aims to be the platform for the entire "work day."
Sana for ITSM is expected to be available to early adopter customers in the second half of 2026, with general availability later in the year. The Travel Agent is currently available to early adopters and is planned to be generally available later this year.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
