How UKG Is Rewiring Work For The AI Era

Prakash Kota wants artificial intelligence to change the work surrounding a customer conversation before that conversation begins. His vision is an assistant that recognizes an upcoming meeting, gathers relevant information and prepares an employee without waiting for a prompt. Getting there, however, requires decisions about business processes and enterprise data that precede the choice of an AI tool.

As UKG’s newly promoted chief transformation officer, Kota is expanding that approach across a roughly $5 billion revenue provider of HR, payroll and workforce management solutions serving more than 80,000 organizations. His mandate builds on approximately 18 months as CIO. “The mandate is make sure our strategy, our process, our data, tech and talent are all moving in the same direction,” he explained.

Building a Common Foundation

UKG was formed through the combination of Ultimate Software and Kronos in 2020. When Kota arrived, complexity in the supporting systems and processes was limiting the company’s ability to scale. His initial priorities included consolidating customer relationship management systems, enterprise resource planning platforms and data environments, alongside centralizing the technology function.

The work addressed a problem that often gets obscured by enthusiasm for new capabilities: different functions could be making decisions from different information. Kota wanted sales, finance and customer experience teams working from a shared foundation. “Whether the news is good or not good, you’re at least looking at the same data and marching towards solving the same problem,” he noted.

Connecting the Customer Journey

Designing AI Assistants Around Human Expertise

Making Transformation a Shared Responsibility