6 Workday Risings Later: Why I Keep Coming Back

In this article we discuss:

• Joining The AI Conversation at This Year’s Rising 
• Learning From the Community 
• Seeing What’s Possible In Practice
• If You’ve Never Been

In the fall of 2019, I walked into my first Workday Rising with a brand-new remit. I had just moved from a traditional finance role into the world of finance systems and transformation, and suddenly I was surrounded by people asking the same big questions I was: How do we work smarter? How do finance, HR, and IT become more connected? And where is enterprise technology headed next?

What I found was more than an event with an interesting keynote. I became a part of a community I would continue learning from year after year.

Workday Rising has given me a front-row seat to the ideas, conversations, and technologies redefining the future of work. Last year, that energy was especially palpable when Workday announced its acquisition of Sana. You could feel the room shift as people started to imagine what agentic AI could make possible.

Six Risings later, that’s what keeps bringing me back: the community, the learning, and the chance to be part of what’s next. And this year, it feels more important than ever.

Joining The AI Conversation at This Year’s Rising 

At Unity, AI is no longer a future conversation. It’s already becoming part of the work we do every day. We’re implementing Sana Learn, with go-live planned for the end of the summer, so I’ll be walking into Rising with specific questions for organizations that are further along in their AI journey.

I’m especially excited to see how Sana’s agentic AI capabilities have evolved across the Workday platform. I want to hear directly from other customers about what’s working, what they’ve learned, and what they would do differently.

I’m also looking forward to learning more about Adaptive Planning Pro and seeing how teams are using AI-powered planning and agentic analytics in practice.

This is the kind of insight you can only get by being in the room. The Rising Community is the biggest reason I keep coming back.

Learning From The Community  

The chance to connect with other Workday customers, partners, and the broader community is invaluable for me and my business.

Some of the most useful conversations have started with a simple question at a lunch table: “Is this seat available?” Before long, I found myself comparing challenges, sharing lessons learned, and hearing how someone else approached a problem my team was still working through.

And those exchanges didn’t end at Rising. Over the years, they grew into a network of peers I still turn to when I need another perspective. We often reconnect when one of us has solved something the other is just beginning to face.

One of those connections is Josh Schwartz, chief financial officer at Medidata. We met at Rising and have been exchanging ideas ever since. One benchmark that has stayed with me is Medidata’s two-day accounting close, the fastest I’ve seen. This has helped shape our own goals at Unity, where we’re working toward a five-day close powered by Workday.

That’s the value of Rising relationships. They don’t just help you solve today’s problems; they raise the bar for what’s possible.

Peer conversations have also given me a clearer sense of where Unity stands. I’ve met customers who are further ahead in an area we’re working toward. Other times, I’ve realized we’re further along than we thought. Both are valuable.

For example, talking with customers who use only parts of the Workday platform has reinforced the value of having HR and finance data connected in one system. When teams are on the full platform, you’re not just looking at isolated processes or reports. You’re seeing how the business works across functions and where there’s room to move faster.  These conversations have helped solidify the value of connecting more of my business on Workday.

Seeing What’s Possible In Practice

One of the things I appreciate most about Workday Rising is that you don’t just hear about what’s possible. You see it in practice through real customer examples you can bring back to your team.

I’ll never forget a customer session on how another organization was using Workday Extend to build applications that sit natively within the Workday ecosystem. The customer was using it to support processes such as accounts payable invoice processing and bank reconciliations—and that’s when the opportunity clicked for me. Extend wasn’t just an interesting concept but something we could actually deploy to change how work gets done at Unity.

I came back from Rising and immediately started the conversation about bringing Extend into our own organization. That’s the difference a customer session can make.

If You've Never Been

If this is your first Workday Rising, my biggest piece of advice is this: don’t spend the whole week with your team.

Go to a session on your own. Schedule a brain date. Visit partner booths. Sit down with someone new at lunch. Some of the best conversations, and often the best ideas, come from stepping outside your comfort zone.

Ironically, my most memorable Rising was the year I went alone. It pushed me to build new relationships, discover new products, and come away with actionable ideas that changed how my team worked.

The way I think about it is simple: You’re the CEO of your own career, and Rising is an investment. Build your network, learn from other customers, and let the experience challenge how you think. Every time I’ve left Rising, I’ve come back with something valuable, and it’s almost never the thing I expected to learn.