There’s a shift happening in the Workday ecosystem, and it’s one that a lot of teams haven’t fully leaned into yet.
For years, if you wanted to automate something complex, you were likely reaching for Studio. That meant specialized skills, longer development cycles, and often a smaller group of people who could actually build and maintain those integrations.
Now, that’s changing.
In this conversation with Ethan Jones, an ERP Applications Manager, we walked through how his team is using Workday Orchestrate to automate real business processes, without relying on traditional development approaches.
One example stood out. A weekly process that required someone to manually manipulate a CSV file, clean up data, and load it into Workday using an EIB. It took about four hours every week.
Now? It’s fully automated.
That’s the opportunity with Orchestrate. It’s not about replacing everything overnight. It’s about identifying those friction points, the repetitive, manual processes, and solving them in a smarter way.
Another key takeaway is how accessible this has become. People who had never built integrations before are now creating them. That alone should get your attention.
But there’s also a technical side to doing this well. Ethan highlighted the importance of learning WQL (Workday Query Language) to control your data more precisely. He also shared practical advice like using log nodes for debugging and leveraging the new Orchestrate debugger to save time.
And then there’s AI.
We’re entering a phase where tools like Workday’s Deployment Agent and external LLMs are accelerating how quickly you can build, troubleshoot, and learn. But there’s a flip side. AI is going to expose weaknesses, especially in data quality and security design.
What worked before, like broad access or “security by obscurity,” won’t hold up in an AI-driven environment.
So where should you start?
Look for one manual process. Something repetitive. Something frustrating.
Automate that.
Because once you see the impact, it changes how you think about what’s possible inside Workday.
If you want to hear the full conversation and more examples, check out the full episode.
Keith Bitikofer is a Workday coach and consultant who helps professionals navigate their careers in the Workday ecosystem. Listen to the Workday Gold podcast for more insights on career transitions and leadership development here
Want to learn more from the Workday ecosystem? Connect with Keith Bitikofer on LinkedIn for ongoing insights about Workday support and team management.