The numbers describe money already committed to a direction
Workday's fiscal 2027 second-quarter release, published on August 27, 2026, reports subscription revenue of $2.471 billion, up 13.9 percent on the year, and a 12-month subscription backlog of $9.034 billion, up 14.2 percent. Total subscription backlog stands at $27.403 billion. Aneel Bhusri's quote says AI drove more than 25 percent of new annual contract value and that more than 5,500 customers now use at least one of Workday's organic agents.
Our sibling pieces have taken the adoption count apart and sorted the product list. This one is for the architect writing next year's platform plan. A backlog figure and a contract value mix are forward commitments from the vendor, and they belong in the plan with the same weight as your own headcount.
Backlog is the vendor's roadmap, already paid for
A subscription backlog is contracted revenue Workday has not yet recognised, and the 12-month figure is the part due within a year. When more than a quarter of the new contract value inside it was sold on AI, Workday has been paid in advance to keep those agents working and to ship more. We'd expect the agent features shown at your last renewal to exist, to be maintained, and to gain siblings through fiscal 2027.
If your team is holding a build item for a custom exception report to run during the close, and the release says the Financial Audit Agent is now generally available, the custom item needs a fresh justification before it gets funded. The same applies to a learning content integration someone scoped in 2025, now that Workday Learning, powered by Sana, is generally available. Neither vendor item is proven in your tenant yet. But the vendor is being paid to make them work, and nobody is paying you to build a duplicate.
Two partnerships redraw the boundary you plan against
The release announces integrations with AWS and Google Cloud. Our sibling piece on the product changes under the revenue line covers what the release says about each. Workday data will become reachable from a cloud account your Workday team does not administer, and Workday agents will appear inside a tool your HR team does not own.
A plan written before August 27 probably assumed the tenant boundary was the identity boundary. That assumption now needs a decision date rather than a rewrite. Put a line in the plan that says which quarter you'll decide whether the AWS path replaces an extract you run today, who owns the identity mapping on the Google side, and what evidence you need before either goes on. Our note on drawing the integration map before the roadmap is the exercise we'd run to find those owners.
Write a stop list, a hold list, and a keep list
We'd turn all of this into three short lists, each with an owner. The stop list holds work you will no longer fund because the vendor has been paid to do it. Custom audit exception reporting goes there once the audit agent has been tested in your sandbox, and so does any home-built learning content bridge. Our piece on why modernisation needs a retirement list explains why this is the list programme leaders skip.
The hold list holds items the release names without a date or a price. The Developer Agent is announced with no availability window. Adaptive Decision Intelligence is introduced in a sentence. Agent Passport is described, but the release does not say what a customer gets to see. Each gets a line, an owner, and the one question that would move it. The licensing change checklist gives you the questions to attach, since none of them say what they cost.
The keep list is the part no earnings release touches: business process definitions, condition rules, integration contracts, and the reporting layer finance actually trusts. Vendor momentum makes this list more valuable, because every new agent enters your tenant through it. Fund its maintenance first, before any hold item gets a date.
The customer names are a reference list
The release names BWX Technologies, Guess, KPMG LLP, and SEB as new customers, and lists expansions at Caterpillar, Merck, Novartis, Lithia and Driveway, and Delivery Hero. If one of those organisations shares your industry or your scale, ask the account team for an introduction to their platform owner. A name in a press release is a lead. A forty-minute call about what the agent rollout changed in their integration estate is evidence.
Workday's guidance gives you the calendar. The release now expects fiscal 2027 subscription revenue between $9.940 billion and $9.950 billion, with the third quarter at $2.515 billion. That next release will say whether agent customer growth, which Workday puts at more than 35 percent on the prior quarter, held up, and whether the Developer Agent got a date. Draft the three lists now, and leave the hold list open until then.
Take the lists to the account team before the next release
Before Workday's third-quarter results land, put the three lists in front of your account team and ask one question per hold item. Does it have a date. Anything that gets one moves to a decision with a named owner. Anything that doesn't stays on hold, and nobody in your steering meeting has to argue about it again. The Workday newsroom post is short enough to read alongside the lists, and our Workday hub tracks what the vendor ships between calls.
Momentum is the vendor's word for where their money is going. Your plan is the record of where yours is going, and the two documents should disagree in the places you chose on purpose.
