The Workday GO for Growth Summit unveiled how the world's fastest-growing companies master strategy and technology, and support people and culture. Gain insights to fuel your business's expansion and secure its future.
Written by Aaron Ellis, AVP, Emerging Enterprise at Workday
On May 28, 2025, Workday convened its first annual GO for Growth Summit at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City, to unveil Workday GO, our newest offering designed for small businesses with big growth ambitions. In addition to Nasdaq Vice Chairman Bob McCooey, joining us to celebrate the launch were key leaders from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), whose research powers the Fortune Future 50; along with key SMB partners Connor Group, DFIN, Kainos, and Sequoia Group.
Joining Workday to learn more about our SMB solutions were leading venture capital firms such as Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z), b.Capital, Felicis, Juxtapose, NEA, and Primary Ventures, as well as ambitious emerging enterprises focused on learning how to scale successfully and profitably using the growth playbook of the Fortune Future 50 as their roadmap to success.
Why do some companies relentlessly explore, innovate, reinvent, and thrive while their peers stagnate? In partnership with Fortune, BCG developed an index of corporate vitality to understand and quantify the key traits of organizations that push the boundaries of their industries and global markets. This index, the result of a multi-year research effort, powers the annual Fortune Future 50—a ranking of the world’s most vital companies.
Workday is the exclusive sponsor for the Fortune Future 50, reflecting the fact that 70% of the current Future 50 run on Workday. During the opening keynote of the GO for Growth Summit, our panel explored the four key capabilities that the Future 50 use to outpace the competition and dominate their markets: strategy, technology, people, and culture. Fortune Executive Features Editor Matt Heimer moderated the panel, and featured a distinguished panel of growth experts, including Ketil Gjerstad, author of the Future 50 research and Global Business Leader for Strategy at BCG; Sina Chehrazi, founder and CEO of Nayya, a leading benefits provider; and Alejandro Mayer, chief strategy and business officer at Workday.
BCG’s Gjerstad explained that the Corporate Vitality Index assesses how well fast growers are performing across these four dimensions, consistently showing that businesses excelling in these areas grow significantly faster and generate higher market returns than industry peers. Nayya’s Chehrazi shared how his company is differentiating its benefits offerings by using agentic AI solutions developed on top of Workday’s Agentic AI System of Record (ASOR) to provide clients with a personalized, 360-degree view of their financial and health benefits.
The Corporate Vitality Index assesses how well fast growers are performing across four dimensions, consistently showing that businesses excelling in these areas grow significantly faster and generate higher market returns than industry peers.
Workday's Mayer shared Workday’s own journey from being No. 1 on the Future 50 in 2018 and 2019, to its introduction into the Fortune 500 in 2024, and how that journey was fueled by focusing on solving customer problems in HR and finance, building scalability into the Workday platform for growth, and fostering a customer-focused culture where happy employees drive happy customers.
Following the opening keynote, attendees broke out into working groups to explore best BCG practices across strategy, hosted by Kainos; technology, hosted by Connor Group and DFIN; and people and culture, hosted by Sequoia Group. Those best practices were explored in depth in new BCG research sponsored by Workday entitled, “The Vitality Code: How Growth Leaders Master Strategy, Technology, People and Culture.” Anthropic, ASML, Databricks, N26, Palantir, SpaceX, and WhatsApp were just some of the companies interviewed for the research.
The closing keynote was centered on the future of work in a world increasingly shaped by agentic AI. Kathy Pham, vice president of artificial intelligence at Workday, explained for the audience that while generative AI creates new content, agentic AI adds the crucial action of not only recommending insights, but also connecting those insights to other systems to executive tasks and automate complex business processes. For growing businesses, this eliminates complicated manual processes, freeing up valuable time and resources.
Nicole Sahin, founder and CEO of Globalization Partners (G-P), a Workday customer and partner, provided a compelling example. Her company helps businesses hire talent worldwide without the complexities of setting up legal entities in every country. G-P’s agentic AI solution, G-P Gia, acts as a global legal and HR team, drastically reducing outsourced legal fees by automating documentation and advice for international employment. This demonstrates agentic AI's potential to revolutionize global workforce management, making it faster, easier, and more compliant.
While generative AI creates new content, agentic AI adds the crucial action of not only recommending insights, but also connecting those insights to other systems to executive tasks and automate complex business processes.
Workday is embracing this shift with its Workday Agent System of Record, which manages not only human employees but also digital agents. Just as Workday tracks onboarding, learning, and payroll for people, it will track, manage, and "train" agents. This ensures proper governance, prevents unintended data access, and provides a seamless, integrated approach to both human and digital labor.
Workday’s Pham envisions a future where AI is seamlessly integrated, providing a superior, almost invisible experience. This future involves vast amounts of data yielding effortless insights, freeing humans to focus on creativity and innovation. G-P’s Sahin echoed this, expressing excitement for enabling talented people worldwide to access opportunities, unleashing the full force of human potential.
"Small business waits for no one,” said Mike Quigley, group vice president of medium enterprise at Workday. “There are always new people to develop, new things to make, new goals to crush." Quigley explained to Summit attendees that helping SMBs crush their goals was the motivation behind why Workday designed Workday GO: to give them access to the same powerful HR, finance, planning, and payroll platform trusted by Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies.
Workday GO eliminates the need to juggle multiple systems, allowing founders to focus on running their businesses—whether that means hiring new employees to meet demand, expanding into new products, or markets, going global or going IPO. Workday recognizes the unique needs of growing businesses and has evolved its approach with Workday GO, simplifying consumption and deployment through predictable formats and new pricing models. This provides a tailored AI platform capable of serving the world's largest organizations to growing businesses. The power of AI is at founders' fingertips, simplifying complex tasks and ensuring a platform that companies won't outgrow.
Closing comments made by Workday Vice President Indy Bains centered around Workday's commitment to its robust partner ecosystem. Workday's AI Gateway and Built on Workday program enable startups and partners to leverage Workday's infrastructure to develop new AI solutions. This collaborative approach ensures Workday customers have access to the latest innovations, delivering enterprise power without the enterprise price.
The Workday GO for Growth Summit was a powerful reminder that the future of business is about constant evolution. Businesses no longer need to outgrow their systems as they expand: Workday GO provides a platform designed to scale with ambitions, from emerging enterprises to mid-market leaders and beyond. Whatever comes next for an organization—global expansion, M&A, or even aspiring to ring the bell at Nasdaq—Workday GO is there to help achieve it.
To learn more about how Workday GO can help your company crush its growth goals, go to www.workday.com/smb and plan to join us for the Workday GO for Growth Summit at Workday Rising 2025 on September 15, 2025, in San Francisco. Seats are limited so register now to hold your spot.
More Reading
Eight in ten small business leaders are investing in cloud-based accounting software. Choosing the right platform can be the difference between small improvements and real transformation.
Small business HR teams often operate lean, but they face the same challenges as any enterprise when keeping pace with modern workforce demands. HR software built with SMBs in mind is the solution.
Small and midsized businesses face steep hiring challenges. But with the right strategies in recruitment and onboarding, they can stand out to candidates and win top talent.