From intranet to intent: How Zuora is building an AI-first digital workplace

Episode 175: From intranet to intent: How Zuora is building an AI-first digital workplace  

What I’d say is, the story now is not how do you use these new AI solutions to reduce headcount. It’s more about how much friction can you remove from a person’s daily work? How do you help customers – or how do you help employees in our case – get back to work more quickly or do things easier when you look at a business process? It’s not about metrics. It’s not about executives looking down at how many people you have; it’s about employees within a business process. How do you identify those friction points that the new AI solutions can take care of and demonstrate that?  

Mary Kay Tisch
Enterprise AI and Digital Experience Leader, Zuora  

Nancy Goebel 

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself, what if the next generation of the digital workplace is less about where employees go and more about what they intend to achieve? Well, in this episode of Digital Workplace Impact, I sat down with Mary Kay Tisch, Head of Enterprise AI and Digital Workplace at Zuora.  

Mary Kay asked herself that very question a little over a year ago and we got to sit down together and explore how MK is moving beyond traditional intranet assumptions to build an AI-first digital workplace that combines enterprise search, a curated AI toolkit, governed experimentation and an operating model that’s focused on measurable business outcomes. We also consider what larger, more regulated, and sometimes less tech-native organizations can learn from MK’s approach at Zuora.  

This is Nancy Goebel, DWG’s Chief Executive and your host. Digital Workplace Impact is brought to you by Digital Workplace Group. Join me now in conversation with MK. Happy listening!
 

MK, I am delighted to welcome you to the Digital Workplace Impact Podcast Studio. It’s great to be with you. I’m so looking forward to chatting with you today. It feels like this episode is a long time in the making, and I’m just really thrilled to be in your company today. 

Mary Kay (MK) Tisch 

Thanks Nancy. I’m really super excited to be here with you. And as you said, it’s a conversation that we’ve been having over many years and I’m happy to finally do this more formally. 

Nancy 

And so, I know when we spoke earlier in the year, you shared a story about how you styled yourself in a new way in your current role to help represent the fact that your focus straddles a mix of enterprise, AI and digital workplace. And I think, just given that was such a significant shift in your career, it’s worth sitting with that for a little bit and talking about what prompted the change and what changed once you started treating the combination of enterprise AI and digital workplace as one agenda as opposed to what happens in lots of other organizations, where sometimes it’s two. 

MK 

Yes, you know, it was definitely an intentional act on my part to make a change in the digital workplace field that I’ve been in for so many years. And I actively searched for a company that was smaller, more nimble, more agile – and as a result of that, I was able to change my work remit for myself and for the team, and then how we looked at digital workplace and how it’s changed so significantly in the last year. I feel like I was in the right place at the right time at the right company to be able to make this change in thought and mindset and how we think about digital workplace, but not just how we think about it, then what we do. And it’s just been an extraordinary experience. 

Nancy 

We’ve been friends and colleagues for many years and I know at earlier points in time you had more of a classic intranet focus in your work and that smaller, more nimble, company you’ve moved into, not too long ago, is Zuora. And so, you deliberately took a very different path and I’m curious to hear a little bit about what you saw in employee behaviour that made you confident that people were ready for something different and to really start to rethink the employee experience and the workplace experience by extension. 

MK 

Yes, so let me try and tie those together. So honestly, employee behaviour told us before any type of strategy deck did, that people stopped going to what we traditionally called an intranet, where you start looking and navigating for information. They really just started wanting to type questions into a prompt, similar to what you would just do with Google. But with the new tools, modern tools available with AI, when we really watched usage, we were able to bring in a true enterprise federated search solution to the company. And what we saw is that people just want to prompt. They don’t want to navigate, they don’t want a destination. They just want to get unstuck. They want to get an answer, they want to take an action, then they want to get back to work and do all this in the flow of work. So that kind of behaviour of ask and answer and then action and then get a resolution pattern is what we started designing around. And it really was showing up organically before we even started to build anything on top of our new enterprise federated search solutions. 

So, for me, what I needed to realize, because I came in with a title of digital workplace, and as you mentioned, I changed my title fairly quickly because I realized digital workplace, you know, it used to mean intranet and portals and knowledge management and collaboration in all of its forms, including video, email, you know, the basics and search. And then enterprise AI really became what we were doing –using tools, doing pilots, those moments where the conversation for employees, it made no sense to run digital workplace and enterprise AI as separate agendas. It was just really one true function to help people get unstuck. And that digital workplace then kind of became an AI layer. And it’s the prompt. And it’s combining prompts with solutions to build things to solve for whatever business problem they’re having in that moment so quickly.  

I guess my team’s goal really is connecting, building, governing, security and then support, and then enabling change – because it’s a lot of change. And you have to acknowledge the change in the last year. But our company’s been very open to change.  

Nancy 

Mm. And in rethinking the employee experience based on some of the challenges that were surfacing through feedback, you ended up making a pretty bold decision to – I don’t know if it’s better to say ignore or stop investing in – the intranet and to redirect a lot of the resources to focus on AI enablement, whether it was the discovery side, the tool side, helping people transform their thinking around how they approach their work with these tools, etc. And I know that we have, as an industry, gone through so many cycles of “Intranets are dead, long live intranets, intranets are dead, long live intranets!” And so, how did you decide what to shut down because there may have been other things beside the intranet, versus what to keep versus what to fund next in this startup mode? 

MK 

Yes. So we didn’t rip out the intranet. It’s still there – and I hate to use the word ignored, but it’s used for certain things: key policy and guideline information. And we really just let usage decide. Like, we came up with a ‘Bring your own content’ strategy method for all of our content and functional owners. And we said ’Bring your own content strategy. We’ll provide solutions for it.’ So, like most companies, there’s no time, money, capacity or appetite to do a content cleanup. Our company was the same. We had a legacy intranet. It stayed live in parallel while we brought in our enterprise search solution. And then we just watched. We watched where employees were actually going for content. 

And then, once we figured out where people were going and how they wanted to get their content, then we worked with our content owners to say, ’Okay, here’s what’s happening. You want to cite things across, let’s say an email, a drive, a Slack, a Confluence, a Salesforce Index, whatever, as long as it’s permission aware through Okta, we can help you provide your content anywhere.  

And so, the way we looked at what we would fund is we self-funded all of our AI toolkit, largely by retiring other SaaS solutions that were either redundant or too focused on an outcome or that wasn’t really a good ROI. So, tools that were either showing slow, low adoption, not clear outcomes, we ended those relationships. And then rather than asking for incremental budget, which we could not do, we self-funded the new AI solutions or other solutions that we wanted to pilot. And what we kept was anything that was really solving for a real workflow. And what we cut were things that content or tools that nobody was using, they had a better way to ask. So that’s kind of how we approached it. 

Nancy 

Yes. And so, you said that one of your key tenants in shaping your strategy was the voice of the employees of the organization. And then, thing two was impact-driven, right? And making sure that the portfolio behind that was fit for purpose.  

But I also know, when we had our spring Member Meeting, you shared with the group that one of the resources you had at your fingertips was DWG’s Predictions and that had been pointing to some major shifts in digital workplace strategy, you know, whether the 2026 generation was looking at AI-enabled experiences or knowledge foundations or more liquid experiences. And I think it would be really interesting for you to share a little bit about how the Predictions helped either inform or validate the approach that you’ve been taking at Zuora. 

MK 

Yes, I mean, some of the predictions that I kept my eye on really did inform me. So, one of the things is we don’t bet on any one platform, right? So, we need to be nimble. Some of the predictions were around, being nimble, thinking in terms of outcomes and layers. So, having different layers for different solutions, having an enterprise search for knowledge, having an AI-fueled self-service type solution for service management was really important. Making sure that we’re constantly experimenting with the frontier models, the LLMs, for reasoning and content work is really important. 

But having that nimbleness to be able to walk away and rapidly change, and move from one solution to another, is something that has been really key for us. We have short-term agreements, we’re constantly making sure that when we evaluate something, we have clear evaluation criteria, and if we’re not meeting that criteria, we move as an organization – or a function if it’s a function-specific solution – and we quickly move on. And you have to be able to invest and divest very quickly. That’s kind of the wave of the future. 

Nancy 

And I will show my hand a little bit and say that part of the reason why I felt like the timing for this conversation was right is that I’m actually on the cusp of publishing a stocktake on the 2026 Predictions and then two weeks later we have the Member reveal of the 2027 Predictions. And since it had come up so strongly in your sharing during our live benchmarking, it just felt like the magic moment to bring everything together. And so, I really appreciate you sharing how it’s challenging and informing your thinking – and I look forward to having a follow-up conversation after the 2027 Predictions are out because I’m sure we’ll have lots and lots to talk about! 

But, in the meantime, one of the other things that you talked about at the Member Meeting was the fact that you and your team had built a curated AI toolkit for employees and you did that instead of betting on a single platform. And there’s often a lot of debate, you know, do you go full on with a copilot or do you take more of a portfolio approach to things? I’d love for you to share a little bit about why you took this toolkit-based approach and how do you help employees understand which tool is best for what purpose? 

MK 

Yes. The reason why we took the toolkit approach is because I’ve never seen solutions change as fast as they do today. You know, solutions are changing every day. We can’t even keep up with the new capabilities that are announced. It used to be, you would look at the capabilities of a solution every three months, six months, but now it’s changing daily.  

And so, it’s really impossible for a company of our size to go all in with something because we need to be very nimble for the functionals, for the verticals, but also for the enterprise. And so, an enterprise solution may not be the right solution for a vertical. It might not be the right solution for Sales or for Marketing or for Go-to-market. And so, by having a portfolio in our toolkit of different solutions, it enables us to take our small investment pool and put it in the right spots for the outcomes, because our AI champions are really responsible for defining, ‘Okay, here’s the problem, here’s what we are trying to achieve, and here’s the potential outcome or ROI.’ And then we’re able to match that solution with that. And if it’s not achieving that, we’re able to move on more quickly and divest and move on to something else.  

So, that’s why it’s been really important for us to have this nimble toolkit where things come in and come out and we’re evaluating them so quickly, because the next solution tomorrow might be 10 times better than what we had yesterday. And what I’ve told my team is – because it can be fatiguing but it can also be exciting – is that we have to just have a short memory. You know, we spent so much time as a digital workplace team before, like you would go in, you’d spend time getting requirements, doing an evaluation, it could take months. Well, now I’ve told my team, you just need to have a short memory because yesterday our priorities were this and the solutions were this; today, just let go of all the work you did yesterday. Now we’re going to start fresh today because it’s a whole new world. And that’s just a different way of working. 

Nancy 

Yes, it absolutely is. And you may remember from the last generation of Predictions, I had put out the idea that ‘Change agility is the new social currency of the enterprise’. And that vignette brings that idea to life so poignantly. I would add that it’s not just about that agility for your team, but it’s that agility for the enterprise as well, to be able to exploit these changing resources but also find a way to take a breath and recharge – and then dive into what’s next because the change paradigm is continuous now. It no longer seems to work in waves with a break in between, so people have to figure out how to recharge themselves and start afresh. 

MK 

Yes, yes. 

Nancy 

Go ahead, MK. 

MK 

Well, and I think with all of that and with always your predictions, you know, you always tend to have a governance layer in your predictions – security – I would say I don’t want anyone to think that we have our heads in the sand around AI security, reliability, quality, governance. That’s going to be always the lens that we have to look at things through. And even though I’m saying that we have a toolkit, we always have to put that first, to make sure that we’re safeguarding our data, our content, everything related to AI and making sure that we have quality coming out the other side. There’s so much still to figure out on a day-to-day basis to ensure that for the company. 

Nancy 

Yes. And content governance seems to be having an especially important moment right now, because AI acts as a magnifier for the good, the bad and the ugly. And so, can you share anything about how you’re handling things like ownership and freshness and trust in content that AI surfaces? 

MK 

Yeah, so, as I mentioned, you know, like many companies, there’s no desire, capacity, time to do a content review. So, the way we’re handling it is each business function is responsible for making sure that their content is accurate, reliable and fresh – and that’s what gets surfaced, so we’ve decentralized that management; the content owners own that. And it’s easier to make things visible with the right solutions because it’s a lot easier to see when was something created, when’s the last time that was used, how many people are using this particular piece of content, you know, how many comments has it had related to whether or not it’s accurate. So, the tools themselves make it easier for people to know what is the most relevant at this point. And that’s kind of how we’re approaching it in a decentralized way. 

Nancy 

Yes. And that feels like a very balanced approach when the reality is that your team and the organization are running lean and need to be nimble, and there has to be a system of accountability where everybody leans in together to bring all the pieces of the puzzle into view in a meaningful way. So, I appreciate you sharing that.  

I know one of the things that comes out of working for a smaller organization as compared to some of the larger-scale ones that you’ve worked with over the years –sometimes in a conversation like this people will say ‘Well, of course you know an organization like Zuora is more like a speedboat in waters with, you know, luxury liners, aircraft carriers, etc.’ So, for the organizations that are larger or more regulated or maybe even less tech-native than Zuora, what advice would you have to offer them in approaching this next stage of transformation of the enterprise experience of work?  

MK 

I think the instinct I challenge is for those larger companies is that instinct of, you know, ‘We’re too big or too regulated to move fast, like a small company like Zuora.’ And I think our real advantage wasn’t, you know, budget – which larger companies have – it was that we had a lightweight, practical governance model. So, clear intake, clear ability or clear process of how to get an approved solution, use case reviews, you know, make sure that we had data guardrails and reusable patterns that let teams move fast without creating more risk.  

And our CIO and leadership didn’t just say the words ‘Go experiment and fail fast’ as just words. They really backed it up – so we experimented with external and internal AI solutions. I now have an engineering team that I didn’t have, because I was generally a SaaS provider. Now I have an engineering team because, you know, we’re vibe-coding AI solutions. So, with being based on outcomes, we can be disruptive but we can also be agile.  

So that’s what I would say is just challenge your instinct to say we’re just too big to do this and people are going to complain and they’re not going to like the change. I think people are actually excited to be able to do things faster and in a different way and not be so dependent on IT; where IT becomes your partner and finding new ways to get better content or better workflows because that’s really what it comes down to is looking at a business process and figuring out ‘Now, where does the digital workplace toolkit fit into those workflows?’ And AI is now essential in changing and transforming the workflows. And you can do everyone can now do that and you now have a huge team outside of IT that can help you with that because you’re now able to provide them solutions to do things themselves. So, I would just challenge that you’re too big to move fast because I think you have a broader team now and a broader tool set that you didn’t have before. 

Nancy 

This is going be your free space or your wild card moment. And, I just want to ask, what are your final thoughts, words of advice? It could even be something you were hoping I’d ask you and I haven’t – as a platform for sharing final reflections. 

MK 

We always have such good conversations when we’re one-on-one and in those meetings. 

Nancy 

(Laughs) 

MK 

I was trying to remember, Nancy, one of the quotes you came out with at that Pittsburgh meeting. What was it?  

Nancy 

Well, while you’re thinking, one of the things that came up during our June Member Meeting in London was that there was a high level of frustration amongst the attendees that leadership seemed to be very attached to one outcome for their AI implementations, and that was hooking success to the idea that you have to take heads out of the equation. And your organization, you as a leader MK, think about things holistically relative to solving problems and outcomes. And that may, in some cases, be the end result, but not exclusively. So, do you have any advice for those frustrated leaders who are trying to get a broader conversation about outcomes going versus the narrowly defined ‘AI equals headcount saves’ or productivity saves? 

MK 

Yes, I think that’s connected to what I remember one of your insights was from the Member Meeting in Pittsburgh, Nancy. And that was you mentioned ‘We’re moving from vanity to value’. That was the quote, right?  

Nancy 

Yes. 

MK 

So, what I’d say is, the story now is not how do you use these new AI solutions to reduce headcount. It’s more about how much friction can you remove from a person’s daily work? How do you help customers – or how do you help employees in our case – get back to work more quickly or do things easier when you look at a business process? It’s not about metrics. It’s not about executives looking down at how many people you have; it’s about employees within a business process. How do you identify those friction points that the new AI solutions can take care of and demonstrate that?  

Because, if you’re able to take that friction out – you know, friction is a word that we used to use all the time, but now it’s even more relevant – in that you are going to be enabling the people that you have to move more quickly with these AI solutions by taking friction out of the processes. And what we’re finding at Zuora is that it’s hard to think in terms of a complete new way of doing work. 

Oftentimes, people will take a process map and look with little point-to-point improvements but what we’re trying to do and what I would say is rather than focusing on reductions of employees, it’s taking a look at the whole process and how work gets done. And you might still have the same people, but they’re going to be doing it in a different way. That’s what I would say to focus on. 

Nancy 

Well said. Final thought, have we missed anything?  

MK 

I think, you know, my takeaway is that it’s encouraging to be in a digital workplace world still. And who would have thought that it would change so dramatically and still be so relevant today, with just a new type of solution available? It’s so exciting for me to think that the static world of digital workplace is not static at all – and the digital workplace for internal employees, which has always been my passion, is just as dynamic and changing as the workplace for customer-facing teams within an organization. 

Nancy 

Yes. And in a lot of ways, the age of AI has brought some rocket fuel to the digital workplace. And I think that’s part of why you’re feeling this excitement. 

MK 

Yes. 

Nancy 

I think coupled with the fact that, as we talked about earlier, the pace of change, the level of uncertainty around us is asking us to solve for X, Y and Z in new and different ways. And, like you, I find myself with even more pep in my step now because it feels like we’re finally poised to break through some of the things that over generations of time we’ve talked about as the perennial issues. And I think that’s where that newfound energy fuels you for what’s needed next. 

And so, it’s an exciting time to be part of digital workplace transformation. And I think that’s a lovely closing note. So thank you for sharing that.  

It’s hard to believe our time together has flown by MK, and I have to say that we need to put a pin in it for now, but I can’t wait to continue the conversation in different forms as your journey continues to unfold at Zuora. So, thank you for popping into the studio today. 

MK 

Thank you so much for having me. 

Nancy 

Digital Workplace Impact is brought to you by Digital Workplace Group. DWG is a strategic partner covering all aspects of the evolving digital workplace industry, not only through membership, but also boutique benchmarking and consulting services. For more information, visit digitalworkplacegroup.com.