01 · STRATEGIC INTENT AND VALUE CASE
48% of non-CEO executives say they are confident in their organisation's AI value case, against 62% of CEOs, a fourteen-point gap that shows the case has not travelled past the top of the house.
(BCG, AI Radar 2026)
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A fleet only moves as fast as its slowest ship, and AI readiness works the same way. Lucas Kennedy’s AI Readiness Pulse scores five dimensions that decide how fast an organisation’s fleet can actually sail. This is the first: strategic intent and value case.
Every organisation running Workday has had the workshop. A room full of good people, a whiteboard, and by lunchtime a list of forty things AI could do. Sift applications faster. Draft the policy note. Flag the pay equity drift before it becomes a resignation letter. The ideas are never the problem.
What happens to the list afterwards usually is.
Most AI ideation stalls not for lack of ambition but for lack of order. Forty ideas compete for the same year of capacity, the same handful of engineers, the same appetite for change. Without a value case behind each one, they compete on volume rather than merit, and the loudest idea in the room tends to win instead of the most valuable one.
Ready looks like a short, ordered list. Which features, in which order, for which measurable benefit. Each one owned by a person who will be asked about it later, not a working group that quietly disbands once the workshop ends.
Because most Workday AI capability already sits inside what an organisation pays for, the investment question is rarely about budget. It is ruthless prioritisation: what to do first, and what to leave alone this year. That is a harder conversation than most workshops are built to have, which is exactly why it gets skipped.
Workday’s own guidance to CHROs evaluating agentic HR makes a similar point from the vendor’s side of the table. Their guide argues that HR’s board contribution needs a dollar figure, not a feature list, citing customers realising an average of $15 million a year in value at scale and $432,000 saved per 10,000 employees in retention alone. Those numbers are Workday’s, drawn from their own customer base, and they will not map exactly onto any one organisation. What they do confirm is the shape of the argument: a credible business case is now the entry ticket to the conversation, not a reward for proving the technology first.
The same guide points out that a platform which solves for the CHRO but raises flags for the CFO or CIO will not survive the buying committee. A value case built for one function to admire does not travel. It needs to convert cleanly into what the CFO is watching, predictable cost and one set of numbers instead of three, and what the CIO is watching, a platform that does not become a parallel governance project.
Strategic intent and value case is the first of the five dimensions we assess in the AI Readiness Pulse, and it is usually the one organisations think they have covered because they ran the workshop. The workshop is the easy part. The ordered list, with owners and numbers attached, is the part that decides whether anything on it gets switched on this year.
@Activate is where we pick it up: prioritising which Workday AI features to activate, putting the data and governance foundations in place, and switching them on with the controls that keep them on. Ideas are everywhere. Activation is what we do.
Pre-decision, mid-implementation, optimising, or preparing for AI, tell us where you are and we’ll give you a straight answer.
Sometimes you need people rather than a project. Fifteen years of Workday recruitment, and a network we use ourselves.
Permanent, contract or FTC placement, or day-rate augmentation. We flex to how you need to hire.
Permanent, contract and FTC across UK, EMEA and North America.
“I worked closely with Lucas Kennedy during the Workday Services Programme at bp and they helped me hugely. They were proactive, they cared and we ended up with 35 of the team via LK recommendations. Truly excellent!”
bp
Support from the people who built it. UK-based with nearshore support from Madrid, and it already knows your configuration.
Named consultants and agreed service levels, monthly. Scale the service up or down as your tenant and your team change.
Measured across engagements.
“When I call, I speak to someone who already knows the answer.”
Technology Company
Go-live is the start of the return, not the end of the project. Most partners are gone before real value shows up.
We do the work with your team, not to one side of it. Fixed price for a defined optimisation, or day rate while the backlog is still forming.
At Jupiter Asset Management, after Adaptive Planning.
“They made sure our finance team genuinely owned it after go-live.”
Mid-Market Business
Recommendations are everywhere. Delivery is rare. We deploy Workday end to end, working as one team with our Advisory practice, with resources across the UK and EMEA and expertise from every side of the table — customer, partner and Workday itself.
We lead delivery end to end — design, build, integrate, test and go-live — working as one team with our Advisory practice, so the strategy you signed off on is the delivery you get. Backed by consultants who’ve deployed Workday from every seat: as the customer, the partner, and Workday.
Our team spans the UK and EMEA with deep bench strength. Ex-Workday, ex-partner and customer-side experience, certified across HCM, Financials, Payroll, Adaptive Planning and integrations.
“They made calls that cost them time, not us. That’s when we knew they were actually on our side.”
Global Financial Services
We have no software to resell, so the advice stays honest. We’d rather tell you what you actually need than sell you what we’d like to.
We sit on your side of the table, with no software to resell. Fixed price for a defined piece of work, or time and materials while the question is still forming.
Our leaders have sat on the client side of a Workday programme, worked inside Workday partners, and worked for Workday themselves. That’s judgement built from every seat at the table.
“The advisory team gave us honest, direct guidance. They didn’t oversell the technology.”
Professional Services
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