Continuous reinvention in the age of gen AI, powered with Workday

Reinvention really comes to life when data, tech, and people work together. As part of Accenture’s broader reinvention, one of the first big moves in our HR transformation was getting all our data into the cloud. Now, with everything connected and available in real time, we’re able to create more personalized experiences for our 780,000+ people, wherever they are.

Now, we can seamlessly onboard forty acquisitions a year, understand the skills and proficiencies of each employee, boost hiring speed by 30% and power a company-wide shift to a new operating model in months vs. years, while cutting HR costs as a percentage of revenue by 9% (three-year CAGR). How? By embracing innovation and partnering with Workday.

And with generative AI (gen AI), the opportunity is greater than ever. According to Accenture’s Work, Workforce, Workers research, 94% of people are ready to learn new skills to work with gen AI, yet only 5% of organizations are actively reskilling their workforce at scale. At a time when speed matters more than ever, Workday is a critical backbone enabling us to target, train and track the skills – from gen AI, to people leadership, to specialized industry skills – of all our people.

Resilient organizations are agile enough to continuously reinvent themselves in today’s shifting landscape, powered by their people. We know this because we have been on the journey ourselves, putting people at the center of our business strategy. We partnered with Workday to unleash our talent potential and prepare people for, not only a gen AI-enabled future, but for whatever is next on the horizon. Over the past four years, Workday has enabled us to continuously reinvent our business and talent models, unlock talent potential, innovate for our people, and make faster strategic decisions. Here’s how we did it:

Getting faster and bolder every day.

Before Workday, we had disparate systems, an on-premises platform, and delivered at most, twenty-five new features a year to our people and business. Adopting Workday created the technical foundation to move at pace. This also helped our team shift their mindset to one of progress over perfection, where speed and innovation were powered by continuous feedback from stakeholders about their needs.

Ultimately, we were clear on our ‘why’ from the start: to be faster and bolder than ever before. Whether it was our ability to re-organize our operating model in weeks, pivot to a single global recruiting platform, launch gen AI-enabled performance management tools in a few months, or deploy on average 475 new features a year to our people, we are now able to move faster than ever before. This approach guides us every day, not as a project but as a continuous way of working.

Connecting data to help smash enterprise silos.

By connecting data across HR, Finance, Sales, and other functions—including skills, staffing, payroll, and revenue—we aligned priorities and broke down siloes. This helped us make faster, smarter talent decisions, all in line with our broader reinvention strategy.

By migrating from legacy custom talent acquisition as well as learning solutions and aligned to global standards, this has enabled scaling rapidly in the markets and business where there is opportunity to grow.

We now use real-time, democratized data across the business, shifting our focus on insights over debating who had the most current, correct data. Senior sponsorship adopted the mantra “If it’s not in Workday, it’s not real,” which removed barriers and created a virtuous cycle.

Armed with real-time data about our people, we can also instantly see our people’s skills and adjacent skills, industry specializations and locations. And because our data is integrated across functions, we can use predictive modeling to forecast trends and talent needs for today and tomorrow.

Powering up your people.

When you have data everywhere, you have data nowhere. So, we made an early decision that all people data would be centralized in Workday.

This commitment simplified and personalized their experience in several ways. No more hunting for information across multiple systems—everything is in Workday. Additionally, the platform lets us focus on people’s skills, not just roles. Personalized career dashboards allow people to update information, highlight skills, explore opportunities, and connect with colleagues. As we transform our own workforce to work with gen AI and not be tethered to rigid jobs and roles, these insights are invaluable to accelerate our reinvention.

Connecting and securely democratizing data improved its quality quickly. For example, integrating Salesforce and Workday gives us a real-time view of an individual’s sales pipeline, crucial for performance insights. This transparency benefits individuals and the business, building trust that lifts everyone.

People + Data + Technology fuels the agility to win in an era of continuous reinvention. As gen AI and emerging technologies transform industries, our partnership with Workday helps us understand and grow our people—so they can drive unparalleled results for our clients and our business.