World of Workato 2025 | Chandar Pattabhiram, Workato

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More from World of Workato 2025

Chandar Pattabhiram

Chief Go-to-Market Officer

Workato

play_circle_outline Savannah Peterson hosts live coverage from World of Workado in Las Vegas.

play_circle_outline Chandar discusses the role of Chief Go-To-Market Officer and aligning sales functions.

play_circle_outline Importance of AI and orchestration in creating effective business agents.

play_circle_outline Empowering Business Success: Collaborative AI Solutions, Accountability, and Actionable Metrics for Enhanced Operational Efficiency

play_circle_outline Anticipation for the upcoming CIO council and customer awards at the conference.

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Chandar Pattabhiram, Workato

Chandar Pattabhiram

Chief Go-to-Market Officer Workato

At World of Workato in Las Vegas, Chandar Pattabhiram, chief go-to-market officer at Workato, joins theCUBE’s Rob Strechay and Savannah Peterson to unpack the company’s latest announcements and vision for scaling agentic automation. Pattabhiram explains why orchestration and agentic AI must be viewed as one unified layer, using his “two-layer cake” analogy to highlight how enterprises can embed intelligence into core business processes. He underscores Workato’s formula for real agents, where AI and orchestration come together to drive KPI-based outcomes at th... Read more

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Savannah Peterson

>> Good afternoon, Workado fans, and welcome back to sunny Las Vegas, Nevada. My name's Savannah Peterson, very delighted to be broadcasting our two days of live coverage from World of Workado. Joined by Rob Strechay in the cockpit the entire time. We are aboard a genie magic carpet ride here-

Rob Strechay

>> Yes, we are....

Savannah Peterson

>> on this one and I am super pumped. No one better to talk to us about the fantastic announcements, everything going on, the sweetest segment so far of the show than Chandar, who was with me on the preview segment. So, good to see you again.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> It's great to be here folks. It's wonderful to be here. So, much great vibes, so much great energy. I'm feeling it. We are feeling it. It's great to be here.

Savannah Peterson

>> It is great to be here. It must be a really special day for you. I'm really curious, before we dig into the cake and the layers of everything going on here, what does the chief go-to-market officer do? Tell us a little bit about your role.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> That's a great question. So, really, if you think about the go-to-market function, there's obviously sales and driving sales, and there's a lot of other functions that are about empowering and enabling sales. When you look at marketing, when you look at partnerships and alliances, you look at go-to-market operations, you might even look at go-to-market strategy. So, the role is how do you bring harmony and not harm across those organizations across the different things to have basically a charter of five words? Set up sales to win, and that is really what the goal is. And if we can do our jobs right to align all these different aspects of go-to-market, then sales can win bigger, sales can win faster and sales can win more. And that's really, at the end of the day, what all this B2B enablement is all about.

Savannah Peterson

>> Who doesn't want to win? Louder for the folks in the back. I'm sure every salesperson here in the room right now loved hearing that. You said something that I thought was really compelling in the keynote and the power of and not or. What does that mean?

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> Yeah, it's a good question. And so, if you look at it today has always been about how do you bring real agents to life? And not just fake agents, we can talk about that later. Real agents to life. And to do that, we define the formula that an agent equals AI plus orchestration, and the formula for that. And so, think about how do you make these agents for critical business processes, whether they order to cash or purchase to pay, not just some small agents on the side, like marketing sending emails or doing coding, but really, for the core business processes you got to embrace and not or. What does that mean is orchestration and agentic, the two layers, can't be thought of as two different things. It's got to be thought of one thing. It's one indivisible thing. So, I was trying to land what's the sweetest way to tell that message? And that is the sweetest way to tell that message.

Savannah Peterson

>> I think you landed these layers perfectly. Look at this. So, tell us a bit about the cake. How did you isolate it down to these two core layers for success, for the sweetest success?

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> Yes, the sweetest success. Now, first of all, I have two daughters and one's 20, one's 14 and one likes vanilla, the other one likes chocolate, which every I try to buy cake, I got to buy two different cakes and there are two different plates, and we don't come to the same table, they go off their different ways. So, the only way to achieve harmony in the house is to get one two-layered cake with all at the same table and eating it together. Now, you take that same thing and apply to what we happen in the AI world, the orchestration layer is very, very critical to give these skills and these contexts for these agents. And obviously, the agentic layer is very important to build these agents, manage them and stuff like that. And the way the cake is that you got to look at as a two-layered cake and it's the same cake with two layers. Workado one on top is what we're doing with one platform, that brings this to life in the most harmonized way. And people who think of it as two different things are not able to get there faster and don't have the ability to make these agents as rich because that bottom layer right there, they've been working for 10 years is very, very important. And that connects to 10,000 plus applications, gives you context, give you skills in all those pieces. That's why it's a two-layered cake and that's the sweetest way to get AI in your organizations.

Savannah Peterson

>> I love it. So, being a dad made you a better executive is what you're telling me?

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> Isn't it always?

Savannah Peterson

>> Yes.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> I do have gray hair.

Rob Strechay

>> I was going to say they all make us better. .

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> They all make us grayer with teenage daughters, especially, and better.

Rob Strechay

>> Yes, definitely. There's a lot of and there as well.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> There is an and there.

Rob Strechay

>> But you mentioned it in passing, but one of the other agent-building companies out there talking about it has a billboard across the street, and they talk about something like 50,000 agents or something like that, which almost beyond the sun, it almost made my head melt thinking about that. I mean being out in the-

Savannah Peterson

>> There's a lot of wild figures thrown out about the numbers of agents.

Rob Strechay

>> So, you guys announced 28. Help us understand some context because you also added over 600 organizations from a sales perspective.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> Yeah, I'll talk about the 600 next, but really it's about the laugh test. A lot of these customers are rolling their eyes and doesn't pass the laugh test when you say, "I have 50,000 agents." And there was a legacy company in this layer of orchestration that has been around for a long time that put that billboard and we all chuckled at it because it doesn't pass the laugh test. The only company I know that has 50,000 agents is State Farm. And so, I don't think any software company is delivering 50,000 agents. Maybe agent is a small way of some random definition, but not the way that we want to define it, which is a true agent is something that is KPI-driven, that can drive at the core of your business, not at the edge of your business, at your core, doing all the stuff that a business wants to do, whether it's inventory allocation or credit checks or order processing or vendor interaction or closing books and you can't have 50,000 of those. It doesn't pass the laugh test. And so, I was joking that State Farm, they probably need to do a Aaron Rogers discount double check on how they're counting agents. But we've been very clear, look, the agent is not a volume game. It is about something about depth of what a core agent is. It is about those things that I talked about. Having these KPIs outcomes and doing it for your critical processes. And to do that, you've got to get these two layers together and that's the message that we're giving today.

Savannah Peterson

>> I love it. I love that you're not afraid of a little spice. You've got a little sugar and a little spice when we talk to each other and I think that that's really compelling. But I think this comes down to what we talked about in our preview segment and I was very excited about this. You made it very clear to me that here you were going to show us and not tell us, and I think that's what the 28 genies are about, the G28 project. I think that's what the cake is about. I'm actually recording all my glasses right now, so I can show everyone the behind the scenes what this conversation is like for us.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> Ah, .

Savannah Peterson

>> Of course I can, absolutely. Yeah, I bet they can see it from my POV, we'll make sure.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> There you go.

Savannah Peterson

>> No, it's awesome. Actually, we can even do a little cake twirl, so that the audience on the back-end here. Looks so good. Looks so tasty. But I think that's really, really, really important. Can you tell us a little bit more about what else the audience was able to see on stage? I know you had case studies, we're talking about CIO modernization. Give folks a little taste in case they weren't in that room.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> Yeah, so showing is believing. In today's world, there's a lot of sea of sameness that is happening today when it comes to AI and every company is saying that, "I have agentic," and stuff like that and, "I have agents," and stuff like that. So, we made a very conscious decision a couple of months ago that this is going to be a show-not-tell place and really show and not showing from an engineering person doing the demo, but showing from somebody who lives the life of that today. So, we had the head of go-to-market operations, we are the head of growth marketing, we are our head of it, we are the head of customer success coming and showing these agents on how they interact with them in their real lives. Then, some engineering product person showing a demo that isn't really feel connected to the line of business person. So, that was the very conscious things from our perspective. And so, they were involved in building it. Interestingly, it was not an engineering build, it was co-built with the business people there and it was really important for them, for our community to go home at the end of the day and say is one way to say that, "I feel intellectual and I feel that I've learned something," which is what's actionable? It's not experimental or intellectual AI, it's actionable AI. And that is what we wanted to get across in the next two days, and this morning was a starting point to that. And as we saw the offer today and saying we're going to get our customers with the first agent implemented, and so that's going to be very exciting for that to make those actionable in their companies.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, I mean just going back to the growth that you've seen over the last year as well and the fact that... I liked the theme of modernizing the tech stack as well. And a lot of these enterprises, over 600, have gone on that journey. Talk to that a little bit.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, just in the last two years. I'm glad you brought up that stuff.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> I'm going to come back to the cake. So, listen, for any cake to taste good, you got to have fresh ingredients. And the fresh ingredients starts with make the lower layer fresh. And to make the lower layer of the cake fresher is about modernizing the stack, the recipe for that is . What do I mean by that? It is about 618 organizations over the last couple of years, 24 months, have gone from these legacy platforms, whether it's MuleSoft or WebMethod, or TIBCO or Boomi, et cetera, now into a more and modern stack. Then, what's in it for them? Well, why do this, right? First of all, in enterprise software, cost reduction can only happen through complexity reduction. There's the only way to do it. So, they've consolidated their stack and I don't need eight different technologies, I need a more consolidated thing. So, that's a cost piece. The second is I gave examples of Gonzaga, I gave examples of Samsara, et cetera. How do you get more agile and how do you get more responsive as an IT organization? And the third is when you get the bottom layer right, it's easy for you to get the top layer. And so, when you modernize on the bottom layer, it accelerates your journey to get the agentic pieces of the agents and the genies live. And so, that is the reason that these companies, it helps them on their core integration and orchestration pieces and it sets them up at a much more accelerated path to doing this as two layers of the same cake.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And I mean quite literally, anytime we're laying the foundation or doing the base layer of something, it's a lot easier to put something on top of it if you've done a really good job on the bottom. And also, it allows for that experience across the organization to be more positive and more empowering for, to your point, not just IT or engineering, but for anyone who can fill out the job description for their genie across an organization and be able to reap the benefits of that fantastic cake. What excites you personally the most about all of the fantastic stuff that you talked about today?

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> Yeah, I think, look, it's, again, the power of and here for me. But I'll just tell you a couple of things, right? The first thing at a meta level is the fact that this is an opportunity, this icing on the cake here is the genies and this is an opportunity for IT and business to work closer together than ever before because these genies or these agents don't have to be built by only traditional IT. You can democratize that with the right set of governance and policies and stuff for these business to do it. And so, that really excites me that there is that synergy that can really be amplified that is going to happen from that perspective. The other piece that's really, really exciting for me is, okay, you have all these genies, you have all these agents. How does an employee go and consume them? So, we have this new offering called Workado Go, and I think we talked about it earlier. Workado Go is a new offering where any employee across the organization can go to one place and interact with these agents or genies and use it in such a way that these genies are doing the work for them and start engaging it. So, enterprise search is one version of that where we go to one place and do search, but that only lets you glean stuff, it lets you do stuff. And so, our idea of Go is how do you stop gleaning start doing? And this one place of all these genies and these agents are icing on the cake for you to access an exciting new thing. We are early in that process, but it's a great opportunity for us to get these agents and all these business users to start engaging it to Workado Go.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, I think what I saw while I was sitting next to some of your customers was they were very engaged. And we go to a lot of these conferences and you don't always see that.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yes, we do.

Rob Strechay

>> And I think what they were engaging with was they were resonating with what you guys were talking about, the power of and. And the fact that hey... And I think Carter was talking about-

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> The CIO, yeah....

Rob Strechay

>> but really laying out the foundation, like you said, if you have a foundation that's really strong with governance and of those pieces, it really makes it a lot easier to then go and democratize it to a certain extent.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> Absolutely.

Rob Strechay

>> And have those citizen developers and interacting, as we were just talking about. How do you see, and what do you hope, that the folks that are here massing around us now, what do you hope that they pull away over the next two days here?

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> I think it's like there's a combination of one thing. In all these things we talked about the agentic orchestration journey, agentic orchestration journey, but really it's about them, not about us. It flips the other way. If you flip this camera, it's all about the people here, the agentic orchestration community. The best thing for them is really discern what's real from what's hype. What's the 50,000 silliness that's being broadcast around? Which is what's the 28 or some things that they can look at? And how do I have these right foundation elements here and how do I choose the right layers on top, the icing, the genies, for me to actually get something that is actionable and move the needle for my business, both from a efficiency and productivity perspective, and in some cases also from a revenue and top-line perspective? And that's really make this actionable, real grounded, be where your feet are, don't be where the billboards are. Be where your feet are, don't be where the billboards are. And that is really, really important from our perspective.

Savannah Peterson

>> Bringing all the spice today. I absolutely love it. But I think this ties into how you roll it up to KPIs. That's how it starts, with KPIs. No company has 50,000 different KPIs.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> I don't think so.

Savannah Peterson

>> And if they do, wow, just wow-

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> Wow in a bad context or wow in a good context?

Savannah Peterson

>> That is wow in a slightly judgey context. But to your point, every single one of these 28 genies really ties to a core driver and success metric within every business.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> So, that's a really, really good point because ultimately the definition of a core agent, so agents sitting on the edge with an agent on the core, the core agent would be called genie. Even a customer can build their own agent from that perspective. Is about that element of A, It's autonomous. And B, It is actually very KPI-driven. If you're having a lead-generation genie, the metric is around how do you increase conversion rates? And is the genie actually moving the needle on that? And if you're having a sales operation genie, you're looking at it and says, "How are you actually letting my configure price code to be done at 90% of the time lesser than what was done before?" Yeah, these are tangible metrics in every business that you need to go drive. And that's where, to me, makes it interesting from their perspective. That's measurable, it's tangible and it's something that's differentiated from that perspective.

Savannah Peterson

>> And it's focused.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> It is focused.

Savannah Peterson

>> I think that's actually powerful right now.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> It's contained from that perspective.

Rob Strechay

>> Sorry. Yeah. No, I mean I think one of the things I thought was also super great to see because you had partners up on stage, you had Deloitte and Accenture up on stage. And sometimes when organizations like quote to revenue, all the different processes that maybe they worked with one of those fabulous partners of yours to go and put in place. Do you see that as also a way to help enable people faster, get to value and get to those KPIs?

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> I 100% agree with you, Rob. Look, no software company that I know of, and probably ever, has got to a billion dollars without having the power of the GSI and the SI ecosystem. You need that and you need that at scale. So, what has happened over the last one and a half years is that really scaling off our GSI partnerships and global systems integrators, whether it's the Accenture or the Deloitte or the Capgemini or the LTI or the PwC, or even in the Indian SIs, like HCLTech or TCS, et cetera. And really, working with them because they are at the forefront of both this transformation, both on the stack modernization and this agentic transformation. And so, really working with them on two pieces. One, guiding this technology decisions for customers. And two, they understand verticals much more than industries because Workado is a horizontal company. When we go to financial services and loan processing or insurance processing or upstream and downstream and oil, or going to retail and looking at SKU onboarding, they have that prowess to work with us to get those into those organizations. It's a very, very important thing for us, especially as they go into the agentic world from that perspective. And secondly, these CIOs are looking at them and saying, "Hey, there's a lot of hype. Keep it real. Make it real for us and-"

Savannah Peterson

>> Keep it real, baby.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> Yeah, be real. Keep everything real, as we heard from both Accenture and Deloitte today. First of all, having both of them on stage, it's an interesting thing. They're both number one and number two technology firms. And they both kept it real on what they're telling CIOs and why Workado together can be great for the orchestration modernization as well as the agentic piece.

Savannah Peterson

>> Speaking of keeping it real, something that I am incredibly impressed with across your executive team and partnership and just the conversations that we're all having is, yes, we're talking about technology, but there really is an incredible focus on people and on culture. And it's obvious what a wonderful work culture that y'all have fostered at Workado. Frankly, it's inspiring. So, I want to close us out here with a personal touch about people. You mentioned your two daughters and your wife earlier today. What do you hope that our current technological revolution does for them?

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> It's a fascinating question. I was, a couple of weeks ago, meeting one celebrity in something and the head of engineering from OpenAI was there. And so, we had about 10 of us and all the husbands and wife, we all went to him and says, "All our daughters are in college. Should we be studying computer science? Should we be studying something else?" That was the first question to see where this thing is going. I really think it's a fascinating era, but I don't think, at least for the next few years, it's not like AI is going to replace humans. It's not like AI... It says AI in the lead and human in the loop, I think it's reversed. It's AI in the loop and human in the lead because going back to my genies, some human has to be accountable for it.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, that's great point.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> And so, I think there are jobs like computer science in terms of the lower-level jobs that are going to get commoditized, but the more you can go drive on a particular domain or a vertical or a function and become an expert at that, AI can be a great enabler for you and a great partner for you to bring the best version of yourself. And so, that's what I've been guiding my children. We'll see. We'll find out.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, absolutely. Would you like to give them a little shout-out? You can give him a little wave.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> Hi, Risha and Shreya. Can't wait to see you and that cake is coming home.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, yeah. We'll see how it travels in the airplane, but it'll make . I love it. Okay. Well, I know that we have a really big day and we get to hang out with you again tomorrow on this stage, which is a total bonus. Can you give us just a little baby mini preview of what people can expect tomorrow?

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> Tomorrow's going to be great. So, today, first of all, we're running a CIO council. The great Jeffrey Moore is here, and we're running a CIO council this afternoon with real CIOs, no selling, just interacting, talking about all layers of what's happening. And then, tomorrow, we talked about these recipes and these know these genies, we are going to open the hood in the morning and Carter and team are talking about how they built it. Carter's the barber's barber, as I like to say. He's the CIO in our company and guiding CIOs, they're going to show how you build it. And the most important best part is tomorrow. You know why? Customer awards.

Savannah Peterson

>> Ooh, that'll be fun.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> Got community awards tomorrow. And really, community awards from going from how these customers are driving customer success, operational excellence, product leadership. And you'll see companies like Lucid, one of the great companies, modern companies in America, and how they're really digitally transforming.

Savannah Peterson

>> They're fun .

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> And you're going to see some fast-growth companies like Amplitude. You're going to see other great companies like SentinelOne and Guidewire, a number of other companies. And so, really, really highlighting them and all the great innovation they're doing. Making it real, making it actionable.

Savannah Peterson

>> I love it. Well, we look forward to having you back on tomorrow evening, as well as checking out the keynotes. Chandar, it is always such a pleasure to hang out with you. Thank you for inviting us into the Workado family and introducing us to all your wonderful people.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> Thank you so much. Great to be here. Thank you, Rob.

Rob Strechay

>> Thanks.

Chandar Pattabhiram

>> It's great to be here.

Savannah Peterson

>> And thank you, Rob. This has been such a sweet segment. I figured I needed to show the audience, rather than tell them just how tasty the Workado layer cake is. I hope you continue to watch our two days of live broadcasts here from World of Workado in Las Vegas, Nevada. My name's Savannah Peterson. You're watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.