JERRY TING
THE AI INTERVIEW
When GPT-3.5 arrived in late 2022, enterprises rushed to experiment with generative AI. Marketing departments promised agents that would transform work and engineering teams built features that generated text. The gap between promise and implementation, however, soon became a problem.
Jerry Ting describes this period as a false start.“ The marketing went from that to agents, but the way that engineers actually use GPT and foundational models was more feature-based generative AI,” he says. Jerry runs agentic AI at Workday, where he moved after the company acquired Evisort, the contract AI platform he founded, in 2024.
Workday has accelerated its AI strategy through acquisition. The company completed its US $ 1.1bn purchase of Sana, a Stockholm-based AI firm, in early November and acquired Flowise, a low-code agent builder with more than 42,000 GitHub stars, in August. The company has also announced plans to acquire Pipedream, an integration platform with more than 3,000 pre-built connectors.
What Workday calls agents now differs from what the term meant two years ago. The company has built systems that perform job functions rather than assist with them.“ Agents are now doing part of what the labour force does,” Jerry says.“ And that’ s what we call at Workday a role-based agent.”
JERRY TING
TITLE: VP AGENTIC AI COMPANY: WORKDAY
INDUSTRY: HR & FINANCE SOFTWARE
Jerry Ting has led agentic AI at Workday since the company’ s acquisition of Evisort, the AI contracts platform he co-founded in 2016.
Agents in payroll, for example, handle administrative tasks that follow established processes but consume time.“ We have an agent that handles the worst parts of payroll that an admin doesn’ t want to do,” Jerry says.“ That’ s going beyond what software can do – it’ s doing the job of the person using Workday, so that person can do more.”
Workday Agent Builder addresses build versus buy decisions Chief information officers ask Jerry the same question in different ways. Should they build AI capabilities internally or buy them from vendors?“ Right now, when I talk to CIOs, it’ s a build versus buy conversation,” Jerry says.“ And then they try to make me defend why they should buy from us.”
Agent Builder represents Workday’ s answer. The platform lets organisations create custom agents for specific requirements whilst maintaining security and compliance standards. Every organisation reaches a point where
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