Workday Design Thinking Enterprise Challenge
ABOUT THE COLLABORATOR
Workday is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, helping customers adapt and thrive in a changing world. Workday applications for financial management, human resources, planning, spend management, and analytics are built with artificial intelligence and machine learning at the core to help organisations around the world embrace the future of work. Workday is used by more than 10,000 organisations around the world and across industries – from medium-sized businesses to more than 50% of the Fortune 500.
Pictured Left to Right: Richa Pathak - Director, Product Management Workday and the TMI “Too Much Information” Team - Daniel Gonzalez, Laura Ferry, Louise McBrien, Nakita McCool and Debbie Wood.
THE COLLABORATION
TU Dublin’s Graduate Business School, has partnered with Workday, in the delivery of skills programmes for tech talent, which includes the Certificate in Creating Successful Products (Level 9, 20 ECTS). The programme, designed specifically for Workday employees in Product Management, aims to support participants in creating world-class products through upskilling in topics like product management, innovation, AI, stakeholder engagement, and go-to-market strategies.
As part of the Innovation and Design module, participants tackled a business challenge set by Workday. In the two day immersive Design Thinking Enterprise Challenge, five multidisciplinary Workday teams addressed the key question: 'How might Workday lead the AI-driven evolution of work's future by building partnership networks?' Each team focused on one specific customer problem associated with AI adoption, such as scaling operations, ensuring algorithmic transparency, safeguarding data privacy, supporting workforce up-skilling, and redistributing resources effectively.
Pictured Left to Right: Richa Pathak - Director, Product Management Workday and the Work Horse Team - Ling Zhu, Tara Hillen, Niamh Grogan, Sean Palmer, Barbara O’Rourke and Emma Jane Wilde.
Using Design Thinking mindsets, teams started by gathering research and customer insights to refine their problem statements. They then collaborated to develop innovative solutions, building early-stage prototypes and defining hypotheses to evaluate their potential impact, all within a two day design sprint.
The challenge culminated in pitch presentations to Richa Pathak - Director, Product Management Workday; Dr. Claire McBride - Enterprise Academy Lead TU Dublin; and Dr. Colin Hughes - Head of Graduate Business School TU Dublin. Each team presented their research synthesis, insights, and proposed solutions, demonstrating potential benefits for Workday customers, stakeholders, and business objectives.
The Work Horse Team - Ling Zhu, Tara Hillen, Niamh Grogan, Sean Palmer, Barbara O’Rourke and Emma Jane Wilde.
IMPACT AND BENEFITS
For Learners
Workday participants developed practical human-centered design skills and collaborative mindsets through applied innovation processes. They enhanced their problem-solving abilities by tackling real AI-transformation challenges at Workday, gaining valuable experience in creating and pitching business solutions that deepened their understanding of AI’s impact on the future of work.
For Workday
Workday benefited from fresh perspectives on AI innovation from within their diverse team and generated actionable solutions to specific customer challenges related to AI adoption. Employees strengthened their innovation skills while contributing new opportunities to address concerns about AI integration and approaches to challenges like algorithmic transparency and data privacy.
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