Workday Announces 'Adaptive Decision Intelligence' to Unify Planning, Questioning, and Scenario Analysis

Workday announced 'Adaptive Decision Intelligence' on May 27th (US time) as a new AI feature for Workday Adaptive Planning. Previously, finance departments spent significant time collecting and integrating data from disparate systems to obtain the insights required by management. Adaptive Decision Intelligence provides a unified environment where finance and business professionals can ask questions in natural language, model scenarios in minutes, and reflect decisions directly into an integrated, managed planning environment. This eliminates the need for spreadsheet work, tedious data processing, or waiting for FP&A analysts to rebuild models.

By combining data stored in Adaptive Planning with operational data from across the enterprise, Adaptive Decision Intelligence enables rapid analysis and verification that previously took days across multiple systems.

Use cases include: - Understanding performance issues: Integrating operational data such as CRM pipelines, customer revenue, and project costs with planning and actuals. - Natural language analysis: Asking questions like 'Why was EMEA Q3 revenue below plan?' and receiving analysis showing impacts from sales coverage, win rates, and deal sizes. - Scenario analysis: Comparing and analyzing the impact of measures such as increasing sales staff or reallocating sales personnel on Q4 revenue and margins. - Direct integration: After management approval, the solution reflects decisions into the integrated plan while maintaining prerequisites and audit trails.

This feature helps teams move away from spreadsheet-dependent analysis into a secure environment. It applies existing security and access rules while maintaining audit trails for all scenarios, balancing exploratory analysis with control.

Adaptive Decision Intelligence is currently in early access and will expand in late 2026.