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In 2024, Workday’s leadership kicked off a company-wide analytics overhaul with a simple mandate: move faster, standardize definitions, and get AI-ready. Leaders spelled out the stakes to teams—legacy sprawl (including 950+ Tableau dashboards), redundant lift, and inconsistent metrics—all of which were slowing the business just as AI tailwinds were accelerating. The answer wasn’t another point tool; it was a holistic rebuild across people, process, tech, and data, with Snowflake at the core and Sigma for diverse analytical needs.
The result? Within six months, Workday had 10+ new capabilities introduced, 50+ data sources flowing into Snowflake hourly, and 300+ active Sigma users and growing—all supported by cross-functional “fusion teams” and a product-style development methodology for data & analytics.
For marketing, it was nothing short of a completely new way of working.
Inside the larger digital transformation effort, Marketing became the proof point, with Siddharth Pawar, Marketing Analytics Director, at the forefront. When Siddharth joined, the marketing team faced a limited view of its own performance. Data access was controlled by IT, reports were delayed, and decision-making lagged behind campaign activity.
“The lag between data collection and analysis left insights outdated, reducing the ability to act swiftly,” said Siddharth. Reporting was slow and dependent on IT; by the time dashboards landed, the window to act had passed.
He broke that bottleneck by introducing Sigma. As a result, Sigma has recognized Siddharth as its Data Innovator of the Year in the 2nd Annual Customer Awards.
Instead of waiting in line, marketers now log into real-time dashboards connected to automated pipelines. Siddharth’s integrations with Workday’s CRM and sales platforms meant campaign performance is visible instantly, and teams can pivot mid-flight. Hours of manual reporting disappeared, and with them, the frustration of missed opportunities.
“By empowering marketing teams with self-service analytics, we enabled them to access real-time insights and make data-driven decisions quickly.”
- Siddharth Pawar, Marketing Analytics Director @ Workday
He rolled out Sigma to the marketing org, integrated it with the team’s go-to systems, and automated the pipelines behind the scenes so marketers could explore live data directly—no tickets, no handoffs.
The impact hit two dimensions at once: speed and culture.
“By empowering marketing teams with self-service analytics, we enabled them to access real-time insights and make data-driven decisions quickly,” Siddharth said.
The change didn’t stop at faster numbers — Siddharth made data approachable, turning complex systems into tools every marketer could use. He built confidence and a culture where self-service isn’t a buzzword, it’s the norm.
“Post-Sigma, real-time dashboards and automated data pipelines saved hours of work each week, improving decision-making speed by 40%,” he said. “This shift led to a 15% increase in revenue from optimized campaigns.”
Through his work, he has reshaped how the marketing team uses data, making it a core driver of strategy and business success. Now, Siddharth says he can focus on being more of an advisor to the marketing team instead of manually pulling data. That includes building “AI-first data products in Sigma,” like agentic AI workflows using Snowflake Cortex.
Marketing wasn’t an outlier—it was one lane on Workday’s new highway. The enterprise program formalized how use cases move from idea to impact: intake → requirements with a fusion team → data availability and governance → data product build (transformation, quality, observability) → analytics (descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, GenAI) → deployment with release notes.
"Post-Sigma, real-time dashboards and automated data pipelines saved hours of work each week, improving decision-making speed by 40%,” he said. “This shift led to a 15% increase in revenue from optimized campaigns.”
- Siddharth Pawar, Marketing Analytics Director @ Workday
That operating cadence ensured Siddharth’s work wasn’t a one-off dashboard; it was a durable data product marketers could trust.
Workday’s team has four flagship use cases running on the shared stack and operating model—the same foundation that enabled Siddharth’s marketing win:
These use cases sit on top of Workday’s modern platform, which includes Fivetran for ingestion, Snowflake as the centralized data platform, dbt Core and Cloud for transformation and semantics, Atlan for governance, Acceldata for observability, Airflow for orchestration, Sigma for analytics, and Snowflake Cortex AI for advanced capabilities.
Siddharth made the enterprise strategy real. He didn’t just add another report; he rewired how marketing makes decisions—turning self-service into culture, compressing decision time by 40%, and capturing a 15% revenue lift from smarter, faster optimization. That’s the blueprint: a modern platform, a repeatable data-product process, and a leader who translates across stakeholders so the business actually moves.
Marketing led the way, and the rest of Workday is moving on the same track.
Read last year’s Data Impact Award Winners here, or more customer stories here.
Workday is the enterprise AI platform for managing people, money, and agents. Workday unifies HR and Finance on one intelligent platform with AI at the core to empower people at every level with the clarity, confidence, and insights they need to adapt quickly, make better decisions, and deliver outcomes that matter.
