At Workday Rising, Intermountain Health’s Mike Harmer shared how Workday agents and a unified data foundation are giving caregivers time back, lowering costs, and improving patient care.
Intermountain Health has a bold mission: helping people live the healthiest lives possible. Delivering on it requires pairing AI innovation with human compassion: using AI to lower the cost of healthcare, improve the quality of patient care, and give caregivers time back for what matters most, their patients.
At the Community Keynote at Workday Rising in Las Vegas, Mike Harmer, vice president of ERP digital services at Intermountain Health, shared how his organization is using Workday AI to make that possible.
A longtime Workday customer and 2026 Workday Customer Award winner, Intermountain Health runs HR, finance, and supply chain on the Workday platform and is now putting agents to work across its operations—including Developer Agent, Payroll Agent, and Self-Service Agent. The results came quickly: within weeks of launching Self-Service Agent, caregivers had already used it several thousand times to get instant answers and resolve issues on their own, which means less time on admin and more time with patients.
In healthcare, operational systems aren’t just about paperwork. “They really support people’s health,” Harmer said.
In his on-stage conversation with Workday’s GVP of Healthcare Shannon McGovern, Harmer revealed how a unified data foundation set the stage for agentic AI, how his team decides which agents to deploy first, and his advice for leaders just starting their own AI journey.
How has the decision to consolidate HR, finance, and supply chain on a single platform helped you to prepare for agentic AI?
Harmer: Getting that data consolidated on one platform put us in a position where we could best leverage AI moving forward because everything's in one place. You've got it all in a system of record, and it supports all of our business operations.
But it's not just about being a system of record for that data in one place. It's also having it in the same place where that system of action is, where we can use the data and build it right into the workflows where our caregivers and our administrative teams are doing their work.
As you evaluated which partner would help you unlock that great ERP data, what were some of your considerations?
Harmer: First, we needed someone who's a quick innovator, who can help us understand our business problems, and keep an eye on the fast-moving world of technology. Things change so fast, and we want to be able to take advantage of all of it as we go.
A second one was open standards. AI is going to happen everywhere, and we need to be in a place where we can build on and take advantage of things. Embracing MCP and A to A and all the other developments that happen here as we standardize the operationalization of this technology is really important.
AI is going to happen everywhere, and we need to be in a place where we can build on and take advantage of things.
Another one is a trusted track record. We had been a Workday customer for several years on the HCM products, and we had a really good relationship. We were looking for somebody who could partner with us, help us solve problems, and who had reliable tech.
The next one was getting set for AI—getting a big bucket of Flex Credits so we could start out and hand the technology to our employees, and give them the freedom to use it to start changing their work.
How do you determine which agents could have the most impact on your business, and what was the process for you to build out the roadmap for consumption?
Harmer: We built our success over time with things like Workday Extend, where we could push the edges of what was possible, and that gave us a lot of confidence. As we started looking at agents coming out now, we worked with Workday's value realization team, which was very helpful because they had built models where we could figure out not just how much things were going to cost, but also what the value was. What were the things that we were going to get, whether that's cost savings, time savings, or higher service levels?
We built our success over time with things like Workday Extend, where we could push the edges of what was possible.
For each of the agents that we evaluate, we run through that same rigor, and we look at the technology. We really understand what the lift we're going to get out of it is. That helps us monitor over time: is it delivering on what we need, or do we need to make pivots and changes?
Another part that's critical is getting operational leadership alignment so we can turn on the tech fast. When you bring new capabilities to a team of caregivers, they need to rethink their workflows and how different teams work together. For individuals, you're now empowering a caregiver and employee with new things that they can do, and they've got to step back and rethink all of that.
Getting that alignment means IT and operations pick the agents together: the ones that will really make a difference and fit our strategy. As we’ve rolled out different agents, we’re starting to see that this alignment is key to success. As we lay out the roadmap, we’re working to tie it closely to our company strategy over the coming months and years.
Which agents have you tried out so far?
Harmer: Developer Agent, of course. Self-Service Agent has been amazing because we turned it on two or three weeks ago, and we've already got several thousand uses now where our caregivers are going through and using that agent to solve problems. Payroll Agent, and several different ones are coming. We're just really excited about them.
Self-Service Agent has been amazing because we turned it on two or three weeks ago, and we've already got several thousand uses now where our caregivers are going through and using that agent to solve problems.
You're also one of the first customers that are live in production on Workday Data Cloud. How do you see data modernization supporting your broader AI strategy?
Harmer: What was exciting to us is the concept of zero copy, which removes a lot of inefficiency right now, a lot of overhead in our use of data. We look at where we want our analytics team’s time spent; whether that's our analysts or our business leaders, we want more time on target. We want the team spending their time coming up with insights and executing them, not managing and wrangling data.
We want the team spending their time coming up with insights and executing them, not managing and wrangling data.
If we look at our analysts over time, you can spend anywhere from 20% to 60% of a team's time just doing ETL processes—just extracting and getting all those feeds set up. We wanted to recapture that time, and so the promise of zero copy and the capabilities of Workday Data Cloud will give us a much more productive use of that time, focused on those caregivers’ unique skills.
Another thing that we look at with Data Cloud is the ability to reduce latency in data. Because if we've got to copy that over to different systems before we can use it, suddenly you're hours behind—or days or weeks behind the insights. And when our leaders need them, and when our caregivers need them, it’s right away. They need to see what's happening and make decisions quickly. So that's been really powerful for us.
If there's any advice that you want to give leaders in the room that are in the early days of their AI journey, what would it be?
Harmer: First is really thinking ahead. Look one to two years ahead at business problems. What's going to need to be solved? What's happening with competitors and your labor markets? And then look at the technology that is going to help drive the business forward.
Second is engaging business leaders early in the process. The hard work for a leader is to think through the change. How do I drive the outcomes that we need? How do I accomplish this? Because there's a lot of change that comes to people.
I'd say the third one is human in the loop. It's so important, and I’d probably say that better as technology in the loop of what humans do. It's how I would think about that, because as an IT person, as much as I want to think that data has the answer to everything, it doesn't. It's the people. It's people who are working daily with our customers, and this technology is coming to assist them. So, keeping that mindset, your people are the most important.
Watch the full conversation on demand.
*Conversation edited for length and clarity.
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