World of Workato 2025 | Kim Huffman, Workiva

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Kim Huffman

CIO

Workiva

play_circle_outline Workiva's role in empowering financial reporting, audit, and risk management through AI technology.

play_circle_outline Collaboration across functional teams critical for successful AI implementation and democratization.

play_circle_outline AI's potential to unlock value by addressing manual friction points and operational inefficiencies.

play_circle_outline Empowering AI Literacy and Governance: Best Practices for Effective Implementation and Flexibility in AI Solutions for Companies

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Kim Huffman, Workiva

Kim Huffman

CIO Workiva

In this World of Workato (WOW) Las Vegas interview, Kim Huffman, CIO of Workiva, joins theCUBE’s Savannah Peterson and Rob Strechay to discuss how enterprises are moving beyond integration to orchestration with AI at the core. Huffman shares how Workiva is enabling over 6,500 customers with secure, AI-powered collaboration tools that transform financial reporting, audit, risk and sustainability management.

The conversation dives into the real-world impact of agentic AI, exploring how businesses can unlock value trapped in silos, accelerate cross-func... Read more

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What does Workiva do and what are the key responsibilities of its CIO? add

What steps is the executive team taking to implement AI initiatives within the organization? add

What are the benefits of using Workato for integration and automation in operational processes? add

What are some key considerations for organizations when implementing AI governance and training for employees? add

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Kim Huffman, Workiva

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Savannah Peterson

>> Good afternoon Workato fans and welcome back to fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. We're here coming to the end of day two of our live coverage at World of Workato. My name's Savannah Peterson, delighted to be bringing you the exciting customer and internal executive stories here with Rob Strechay. Rob, this is going high on my favorite trip to Vegas with you out of all of the conferences that we do. We're here all the time.

Rob Strechay

>> This has been a great experience and I think really the customers that have come here to wow us with their stories-

Savannah Peterson

>> Well played

Rob Strechay

>> Have been fantastic.

Savannah Peterson

>> Speaking of someone who's going to wow us, Kim, thank you so much for taking time today.

Kim Huffman

>> Absolutely.

Savannah Peterson

>> So to get us warmed up, just in case the audience isn't familiar with Workiva, what do you all do?

Kim Huffman

>> So I'm CIO at Workiva. I'm responsible for the business technology and internal systems functions there as well as the data and security areas. I've been in tech for 20 years. And I have the honor right now of driving the technology and AI initiatives at Workiva, and we have a robust platform that provides a secure AI-powered collaboration tool for financial reporting, audit, risk and sustainability management for over 6,500 customers.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh my goodness, that's a lot.

Kim Huffman

>> Yeah.

Savannah Peterson

>> Wow. I know you all were big. I didn't know it was quite 6,500 customers. That's really impressive. I can imagine your services are in pretty high demand now as people start navigating our AI future.

Kim Huffman

>> They are in high demand. There's a lot of external pressures on boards and CEOs and executive teams around headwinds in the market, regulatory environment, et cetera. Nothing new for the office of the CFO, that is our primary customer, but they're finding that AI and technology in general is helping them overcome some of those challenges that they're facing.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah.

Rob Strechay

>> So when you look at how you're working with Workato and bringing it in, AI, given that you're a platform that has AI in it and you're providing that to your customers-

Kim Huffman

>> Absolutely.

Rob Strechay

>> How do you see the whole platform and AI and the genies helping you at the core of your business?

Kim Huffman

>> I think right now we're at a pretty interesting time in technology, let's say. And I think if you think about from a CIO perspective, there's a proliferation of AI tools out there, whether that's embedded applications, whether that's models that are available, whether that's the ChatGPTs, the Geminis, et cetera. One of the things that as this AI proliferation, it's not new. We had SaaS proliferation that we had to overcome 5 years ago, 10 years ago. We're seeing that more and more, and so it's hard to manage and one of the things that Workato does offer is a platform that enables us to really manage all of those things centrally in one location, as well as the different types of AI that have come about over. If you think about the maturity of AI, when you think about gen AI and then the agentic AI, there's a difference. There's a different use case, right? There's a knowledge use case, and then you are looking to take action on that knowledge and you want to really have at your fingertips a platform that enables you as a technologist driving initiatives internally to be able to manage all those things together in a single platform.

Savannah Peterson

>> Speaking of empowerments, how are you empowering employees to leverage all this tech?

Kim Huffman

>> It's been an interesting journey, and one of the things that we've done at Workiva is really AI to be successful, we have found needs to be a executive... It's a team sport, right?

Savannah Peterson

>> 100%.

Kim Huffman

>> And it has been a vision of our CEO and a call to action across the entire executive team. I'm currently driving the initiative in close collaboration with all of the functional leads because never before in a technology wave have we actually seen the technology democratize to the level where you have functional business users that are able to utilize and potentially develop their own agents and their own capabilities using AI. And so we've had to be very prescriptive and thoughtful about how we rolled out our program and it has really started with literacy around AI. What is AI? What are we talking about when we say AI, as well as governance? And then developing a program where we're able to sort of curate across Workiva and harvest all of the use cases and ideas that the functional users actually have and iterate on those quickly to ensure that we're doing it thoughtfully and also really testing out the value hypothesis that we think we're going to get from the use case and looking at the value realization that we do end up getting from the use cases that we're iterating upon.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah. I mean, I think to me that was one of the things that rang true even in the keynotes yesterday was about how many ISVs like yourself are using Workato underneath the hood to help from that. Because again, you kind of touched on it a little bit, but you going to overcome all these different silos. Has that really been a big push? Because like you said, you have to also have governance and things like that-

Kim Huffman

>> Correct.

Rob Strechay

>> To make sure you're protecting your data, but so there's kind a yin and a yang to the silos-

Kim Huffman

>> Exactly.

Rob Strechay

>> Versus overcoming that.

Kim Huffman

>> So I actually find it quite an exciting time to be a technologist with AI because I think one of the things that we're seeing is that there is a tremendous amount of value that is locked up in an application. And so if you think about AI and if you really think about the possibilities of AI, it has the ability to unlock functional silos or functional applications. And especially when we move into agentic, the value that an organization is going to be able to unlock is really when they start looking at cross-functional processes. And it's been something we've been trying to do for years with digital transformation and some of the challenges that we've seen are that organizations still think functionally. If you think about an agent, the agent is not bound by a functional silo, and so they think about a business outcome that you're trying to achieve regardless of what functional silo-

Savannah Peterson

>> That's a really good point, yep.

Kim Huffman

>> What functional applications or where the data resides, it's able to think broader. And so I think the ability for businesses to focus on what is our outcome that we're trying to achieve and then working backwards with building your agents to achieve those outcomes, you're going to see a lot of agents working and cross-functionally and cross-application much more so than you ever did previously, and it's going to... Probably, we'll realize more of that digital transformation goal that we've been trying to achieve for years with this new technology.

Savannah Peterson

>> I think that's a really good point. And you also can get that collaborative intelligence from agents talking to each other.

Kim Huffman

>> Absolutely. Because they want to work together

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, yeah. Well, and they want to solve the problem. And it really is, I mean, when I'm trying to describe to people what we all do, but also why these are going to be so useful is it's, "Oh, I wonder where that piece of information is," or, "I wonder who I can find out more about this," or, "Do I have to ask someone on the team?" No, you won't have to do any of that anymore.

Kim Huffman

>> Exactly.

Savannah Peterson

>> Everyone can be as empowered as your most legacy knowledged human based on these tools.

Kim Huffman

>> Absolutely. That's exactly correct. And there's going to be a tremendous amount of value that has been trapped that's going to be unlocked in organizations.

Savannah Peterson

>> What do you think is some of that value that we're going to see unlocked?

Kim Huffman

>> I think you're really going to begin to think about where you have a lot of manual friction points or handoffs in an operational process. And for years, Workato is uniquely positioned because they've been focused on integration and automation, which really is the foundational building block of an agentic solution. And we've been able to, as Workato customers, Workiva's been able to unlock some of that, but the flywheel effect and the speed to which we're going to be able to take advantage of that I think is where you're going to see the most surprises.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, I think you're absolutely right about that, and it's just going to be so cool. People think about what it's going to take away from human activity. No way. It's going to augment so much.

Kim Huffman

>> Absolutely.

Savannah Peterson

>> And we don't even know what people will do when they don't have to do all those repetitive tasks anyway. It's going to be refreshing. I'm curious, so how has working with Workato enabled you to unlock that value? I mean, I can think of some kind of obvious reasons, but I'm curious how it's worked across your org.

Kim Huffman

>> Well, I think, as I said before, the ability to leverage what we've done in Workato through our automations and our integrations has given us a quick on-ramp to look at areas that we want to agentify, so to speak. As well as some of the pre-built capabilities around specific functions of sales, IT, HR, that allow us to realize a faster time to value in those areas and sort of jump-start some of the things that we would like to do, especially in our growth areas and sales. We're a growing company and we want to continue to fuel that growth, and so that has been some unlocks that we wouldn't been able to see.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's awesome.

Rob Strechay

>> When we've talked with other customers and with some of the folks from Workato, the whole idea of KPIs and what's been driving it, what have been some of the KPIs that you looked at that helped drive where you're going with AI?

Kim Huffman

>> I think it really depends on the function that you're looking at. I think some of the KPIs that we look at in the go-to-market area are pipeline gen, right? Faster pipeline gen, the productivity per sales rep, the productivity per SDR, the deal velocity, how quickly can we move a deal from point A to closure? A lot of the administrative areas, approvals, reviews, quality, data quality. One of the other things that we found that has been a highlight is the bane of every CIO's existence has been data quality. And what we have found with AI and some of the genies that we've implemented is that the technology is not the longest pole in the tent in an implementation. What we have found is a lot of times the content that we're trying to expose through the knowledge genie, if we have content that has not been updated, it will expose it faster than the humans could have exposed it. And so we're actually, interestingly enough, using some of the technology to help cleanse some of our data and our content, which was a surprise and kind of a benefit that we had not anticipated. So it's allowed us to speed up some of that as well.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, that's actually a really good point because, I mean, data's the foundation of all of this.

Kim Huffman

>> Absolutely.

Savannah Peterson

>> But being able to observe and act when it's not the best or clean, that's really empowering for being able to get things done faster and with confidence and trust.

Kim Huffman

>> Absolutely.

Savannah Peterson

>> And I think that's kind of the... We're in a real interesting time right now where I feel it's almost as wobbly as these chairs. Can we trust these AI or these agents or these genies or not? And that's the type of stuff when you realize it's going to make you even better than any, or faster at least in that case, than the humans would've been. It's really powerful. All right, I got a personal question for you, Kim.

Kim Huffman

>> Sure.

Savannah Peterson

>> We've talked a lot about what agentic is going to do and we've talked about it in the workplace environment. If you were to design a personal genie, what would you want your genie to do for your life?

Kim Huffman

>> Oh, that's tough. I think one of the things that I would love to... You're so busy on your day-to-day working and where do you want to vacation? Where do you want to go? I mean, personally, I would love to have a genie that I had a bucket list and all these things I want to do, and it actually created something for me that I would say, "Let's plan a trip and start addressing some of the items on my bucket list. I'd like to have a fabulous trip to do these things." Because to be honest with you, it's hard to do when you're busy and you're working all the time. I actually just purchased a home.

Savannah Peterson

>> Congrats.

Kim Huffman

>> And I used it to help me, I'm not a designer by trade, and so I found it quite helpful there as well, helping me with ideas and paint colors. And so that was an unexpected benefit. I didn't think it would be able to help me, and I kept asking it questions and asking it questions, and I found that I kept getting the answers that were something I wasn't expecting which is what AI is supposed to do. And so it was a pleasant surprise.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, I love that. I use AI to design my manicures for every show.

Kim Huffman

>> Oh.

Savannah Peterson

>> Which is a really fun way. I take in all the brand Pantones from the show or the brand's colors and then ask AI to get creative with my manicures. So it's a better designer, to your exact point, than I ever could have expected.

Kim Huffman

>> Exactly.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah. Rob, are you going to design your next manicure or your next home paint job?

Rob Strechay

>> Maybe my hairstyle.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, I love that.

Rob Strechay

>> There you go.

Savannah Peterson

>> I didn't even think about doing that.

Rob Strechay

>> There you go. It could show me what it will look like ahead of time with the generation, but we'll see. I still have to come up with a better one for later on.

Savannah Peterson

>> We're running out of time.

Rob Strechay

>> I know we're running out. We've got a couple of hours.

Savannah Peterson

>> Or if you got a manicure couple.

Rob Strechay

>> Well, if I got a manicure, I'd probably go clear, but I know I'm boring.

Savannah Peterson

>> Soap.

Rob Strechay

>> I get it. I get it. That's okay.

Savannah Peterson

>> All right, Kim, what is your advice for other companies or even your customers as they're starting to navigate our agentic future?

Kim Huffman

>> I think it's important, we actually... Workiva just completed a practitioner survey and one of the things that we found was thinking about data, thinking about AI governance and thinking about literacy was very important and we have been very thoughtful in our approach internally as well. And so those are the things I would advise people is there's a lot happening. Stay nimble, stay flexible, but have a governance structure, have framework. Think about your data, think about the employees in your organization and where they are on this AI journey. And then also think about the training and the functional specific literacy that those employees are going to need as they reshape and redesign and rethink the way that they work on a day-to-day basis.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's a great point, Kim. All right. Final question for you because you're lovely to have on the news desk. When we're hanging out at WOW next year, what do you hope to be able to say then that you can't yet say today?

Kim Huffman

>> Well, I hope that we're farther along on our AI maturity and our journey. It's been exciting so far. I think there's been a lot of bright spots and highlights and I would hope that we would have more bright spots and highlights to share. As well as when we talk about value hypothesis and value realization, I'm tremendously hopeful that we will be able to articulate that value realization that we hope to gain next year at WOW.

Savannah Peterson

>> Awesome. Well, we can't wait to tell that story with you, Kim. Thanks so much for taking the time today.

Kim Huffman

>> Thank you.

Savannah Peterson

>> This has been a joy. And thank you, Rob, as always. I won't make fun of your boring manicure ideas moving forward.

Kim Huffman

>> It's okay.

Savannah Peterson

>> But you still do have to figure out your personal-

Rob Strechay

>> I do. I have to figure that out. We've got a couple hours left.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, yeah. Yes. All right. I hope we're all having as much fun as we're having here in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada at World of Workato. My name's Savannah Peterson. You're watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.