Workday strengthens portfolio with acquisition of Evisort

The software manufacturer Workday once again sets a strong mark in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). With the acquisition of the San Francisco-based company Evisort, Workday adds new AI-supported document processing tools to its existing portfolio. Terrance Wampler, Group General Manager at Workday, emphasizes that this technology will help customers unlock the value of their most critical data and respond to insights more efficiently. This acquisition seamlessly integrates into Workday's growing collection of AI-focused acquisitions, which began in 2014 with the HR analytics company Identified and continued in 2018 with the purchase of SkipFlag. Founded by Harvard and MIT researchers in 2016, Evisort now enables Workday customers to check documents such as revenue contracts, facility agreements, and supplier invoices for errors and omissions, and also receive recommendations on document language. Despite fierce competition in the industry, Evisort has been able to establish itself early on. Companies, including prominent clients such as Microsoft, Motley Fool, NetApp, and Vonage, have relied on Evisort's capabilities. Particularly impressive: Prior to the acquisition, Evisort generated investments totaling $155.6 million through capital and debt from investors like General Atlantic, TCV, Vertex Ventures, and Microsoft's M12. Evisort CEO Jerry Ting emphasizes that Evisort's features, including chatbots for referencing internal corporate knowledge bases, will be integrated into Workday's offerings in the coming months. Ting sees the merger of Evisort's document intelligence technology with Workday's unified finance and HR platform as an opportunity to significantly improve the utilization of critical business data. The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of Workday's fiscal year 2025, subject to customary closing conditions. Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri views AI as a "tectonic shift" with immense potential but notes that many companies struggle to implement AI meaningfully. In 2023, Workday announced it would expand its Workday Ventures VC fund by $250 million to support AI, machine learning, and workflow automation projects. The company is already bringing AI capabilities into its various HR products, including automatic back-office agents.