Transforming workplace experiences with AI: Insights from Zuora’s CIO
When transforming workplace experiences with AI, vision must precede technology. This principle sits at the heart of Zuora’s approach to digital transformation and has yielded remarkable results.
In our latest Atomic Conversation, Lenin Gali, Chief Business Officer at Atomicwork, was joined by Karthik Chakkarapani, SVP Corporate Operations and CIO at Zuora, a global leader in subscription management.
Drawing from nearly three decades of leadership experience at companies like Salesforce and Cisco, Karthik shares his compelling vision for workplace transformation through AI.
Our discussion explores how he evaluates technology partnerships, his methodical approach to solving employee pain points, and the strategic journey that led Zuora to integrate Atomicwork as a cornerstone of their workplace innovation strategy.
Listen to the full conversation here or glance through our key takeaways below.
Taking a vision-first approach to workplace transformation
Karthik’s approach to technology solutions begins with a fundamental principle: define the problem thoroughly before hunting for solutions. When first introduced to Atomicwork, he reversed the typical vendor conversation by insisting on sharing his vision first and not jumping straight into product demos as is standard practice in the industry.
I was very clear; we know exactly what our needs are, what our challenges are, and what we’re looking to solve. We don’t want to have one more solution on top of all the applications that we have. - Karthik Chakkarapani, SVP Corporate Operations and CIO at Zuora
After sharing his workplace transformation strategy, the team discovered that 50-65% of Atomicwork’s product roadmap already matched Zuora’s needs.
This candid approach set the tone for a partnership built not just on technology, but on shared intent.
Mapping the employee journey and identifying pain points
Upon joining Zuora a couple of years ago, Karthik’s 30-60-90 day plan revealed critical workplace experience challenges: “One of the top things that came up in my first 30 days is that IT is too slow to respond. Simple things like password resets, Wi-Fi connections, or it takes a long time to get application access.”
Instead of rushing to implement new tools, Karthik’s team mapped the employee journey and identified common friction points. His approach focuses on measurable outcomes.
At the end of the day, it’s all about how we can make Zuora’s employees more efficient and effective, regardless of the technology or other key enablers.
For Karthik, selecting technology partners wasn’t really about checking feature boxes. He was on the lookout for co-innovation partners who could serve as extensions of his team.
“We wanted to have a partner that we can co-develop, co-design, co-innovate with; it’s almost like an extension of my team.”
This collaborative approach led to the successful implementation of ‘Agent Zoe’, Zuora’s employee support AI agent built on the Atomicwork platform. This agent empowers employees to access instant support across IT, Finance, HR, and Workplace services directly within Slack.
The partnership has delivered tangible results. “A year ago, we were getting an average of 2,000-3,000 tickets a month. When we did the analysis, 37% of those incidents and requests were in categories which could be easily resolved without even looking at an agent.”
With these L1 goals being met, Karthik is now pushing for more ambitious targets. “We are pushing ourselves to the next ambitious goal, drive more than 90% and reduce the case volume by 40% to 50%.”
The Future: Agent of agents model
Looking ahead, Karthik is passionate about creating a unified employee experience through what he calls an ‘agent of agents’ model.
“We have like 150 SaaS applications. I know more than half of them have their own AI agents. I’m not enabling them unless it is super important. What I want to avoid is the fragmentation of the AI agent experience for employees.”
His vision is to create a ‘super agent’ of sorts that coordinates with other AI systems.
I’m very passionate about ‘agent of agents’ where an employee goes to one place to help them get their work done. It’s almost like one digital personal assistant.
For any transformation initiative, Karthik emphasizes the importance of actionable insights: “If you do not know where you’re going, it's difficult. We need the right data, we need the right insights. The insights should be able to answer all our key questions so that we can make decisions.”
For companies looking to bring AI into their enterprise game plan, Karthik cautions against creating the AI equivalent of siloed cloud applications.
“It’s very important we look at this holistically, not only from experience but also process and data integration. We want to have a good harmony of process and data, otherwise, we’ll go back into the same issues that we had when we started bringing cloud into the organization.”
The Atomicwork-Zuora partnership demonstrates how a thoughtful, vision-driven approach to AI implementation can transform digital workplace experiences. By focusing on outcomes rather than technology for its own sake, organizations can create meaningful improvements that enhance both employee and customer experiences.
As Karthik puts it, “If you drive and improve the employee experience, the work experience, you’re directly impacting the customer experience and also the partner experience.”
