Workday Launches 120+ AI Models to Speed Contract Reviews for Small Businesses

Workday Launches 120+ AI Models for Faster Contract Analysis

Ops teams live in contract chaos: vendors, leases, employment agreements, MSAs, DPAs-across HR, finance, legal, IT, and sales. Workday has introduced a Custom AI Model Library to extend its Contract Intelligence Agent, with 120+ pre-built models aimed at cutting review time and surfacing risk without adding headcount.

The models identify key clauses, flag issues, summarize terms in plain language, and extract the fields teams chase down every week. No coding required, and models can be improved through user feedback.

What matters for Operations

• Clause detection and risk flags: highlight renewal terms, indemnity, liability caps, SLAs, and data privacy obligations.
• Summaries your stakeholders will actually read: plain-language overviews of employment terms, vendor commitments, and change orders.
• Structured extraction: pull pricing, payment terms, notice periods, square footage, property taxes, and other lease details into your systems.
• Cross-functional coverage: HR, finance, legal, IT/security, and sales all get a consistent review layer.
• No-code tuning: reviewers correct fields, and the system learns from feedback to reduce rework.

Where it fits in your workflows

• Procurement and vendor risk: first-pass review of MSAs, SOWs, and DPAs; route exceptions to legal only when needed.
• HR ops: summarize employment agreements and flag non-compete, IP assignment, and termination terms.
• Sales ops: extract pricing, discount limits, renewal and termination for convenience, and invoice rules.
• Finance: auto-capture payment schedules, late fees, and audit rights for faster invoice processing and accruals.
• Facilities/real estate: extract lease terms (square footage, operating expenses, tax obligations) and critical dates.
• IT/security: surface security addenda, privacy clauses, subprocessor requirements, and breach notification windows.

Expected impact (measurable, not mythical)

• Contract cycle time: reduce days-to-sign by accelerating first-pass review.
• Manual touch time: fewer hours spent searching, copying, and tracking fields.
• First-pass yield: more clean contracts through standardized checks.
• Risk visibility: clearer view of obligations, renewals, and exceptions across departments.
• Backlog relief: route only true exceptions to legal; keep routine work moving.

Quick implementation checklist

• Pick 2-3 high-volume contract types (e.g., vendor SOWs, NDAs, leases) for a 30-day pilot.
• Define must-have fields and clauses; set confidence thresholds for auto-approve vs. human review.
• Create routing rules by risk level; keep legal focused on exceptions.
• Enable redline summaries so approvers know exactly what changed.
• Instrument metrics: cycle time, first-pass yield, reviewer corrections, and extraction accuracy.
• Weekly tuning loop: review false positives/negatives and update guidelines.

Risks and guardrails to set early

• Access control: limit sensitive contracts to the right people; log all views and changes.
• Data handling: align retention and deletion with your policies; avoid exporting PII unnecessarily.
• Consistency: publish a clause and field playbook so reviewers make the same decisions.
• Human-in-the-loop: require review on low-confidence items and high-risk clauses.
• Process fit: map current intake and approval steps before turning on automation, then update SOPs.

What Workday is saying

"AI in the enterprise often delivers piecemeal automation without true transformation. We aren't just adding features; we are giving our Contract Intelligence Agent new skills that help solve real business problems." - Jerry Ting, vice president and head of agentic AI & Evisort at Workday.

How to move now

• Start with contracts that are frequent, templated, and costly to review manually.
• Stand up a small reviewer squad (ops + legal) to tune models weekly for one month.
• Publish win metrics to stakeholders: days saved, error reduction, and fewer escalations.

If you want product specifics and availability, see Workday's AI overview and contract intelligence resources here: Workday AI.

If your team needs practical upskilling on AI workflows and automation, explore role-based training here: Complete AI Training - Courses by Job.

Bottom line for Ops: offload the repetitive review work, standardize decisions, and keep humans on the edge cases. Free capacity for strategic projects while reducing contract risk and cycle time.