On Tuesday, Workday said it had entered into an agreement to acquire Evisort, an AI-powered contract management platform, for an undisclosed sum.
“Evisort’s technology will enable Workday to bring in a suite of AI-powered document processing tools into its existing finance and HR software applications,” said Terrance Wampler, group general manager at Workday.
Evisort will finally let us realise our vision of enabling our clients to unlock value in their most strategic data,” he said. “Using AI-powered document intelligence will empower them to uncover and act on insights more quickly and confidently.
Evisort bolsters Workday’s growing collection of AI-focused acquisitions, which includes the 2014 purchase of Identified, an analytics company focused on HR. The organisation took SkipFlag, a developer of an AI-powered knowledge base that automatically builds itself from an organisation’s internal communications, in 2018. 
Based in San Francisco Amine Anoun, Jake Sussman, and Jerry Ting are members of the Harvard Law and MIT research team that founded Evisort in 2016.
Currently, the startup offers AI-powered modules allowing clients to analyse documents like revenue contracts, asset agreements, and supplier invoices for gaps in information and mistakes, with suggestions also provided on document terminology.
Evisort dynamically highlights key elements of a document, such as unclaimed benefits in vendor contracts, analyses document terminology against historical standards, and e-mails customers warnings of important upcoming dates regarding documents, such as renewals.
Competition is brisk in the AI document tooling sector, which is expected to reach $19.32 billion by 2032, according to Fortune Business Insights. Evisort had early success, including passing an early security hurdle, and has since expanded its roster of clients to include household names like Microsoft, Motley Fool, NetApp, and Vonage.
Before its exit, Evisort had raised $155.6 million in capital and debt from a range of investors, including General Atlantic, TCV, Vertex Ventures, and Microsoft’s M12, according to Crunchbase.
That functionality will soon be available to Workday customers in Evisort, whose chatbots are engineered to refer to a company’s knowledge bases, including policies on HR and finance, among others, said Ting, chief executive of Evisort, as they begin integrating into Workday’s suite over the coming months.
AI is a powerful catalyst in changing how organisations transform unstructured information within documents into strategic business decisions,” said Ting in the news statement. “We’re excited to bring Evisort’s document intelligence capabilities together with Workday’s complete finance and HR platform so customers can leverage key business data more effectively—all from a unified system of truth.
Workday’s second such acquisition after HiredScore, an HR platform, expects to close the deal during the third quarter of fiscal year 2025, pending standard closing conditions.
Over the last years, Workday has invested heavily in AI technologies.
In 2023, it said it would add $250 million to its Workday Ventures VC fund, following investments in AI, machine learning, and workflow automation projects. Workday has incorporated AI functions into its suite of HR products, touting “agents” intended to make back-office work more efficient and automated.
At the Workday Rising conference on Tuesday, Workday chief executive Carl Eschenbach described AI as a “tectonic shift” that carries “immense potential” for the enterprise segment. He acknowledged, however, that many companies were struggling to implement AI “in a way where meaningful impact can be realised.”.
