Is Now the Right Time to Invest in Implementing Agentic AI?

Implementing agentic AI, a system that can autonomously make decisions and take actions, faces challenges in adapting legacy workflows, pushing experts to suggest phased adoption alongside existing automation tools.

While vendors say their current agentic AI-based offerings are easy to implement, analysts say that’s far from the truth.

Software vendors’ pitches are evolving, with agentic AI beginning to supplant generative AI in their marketing messages. Rather than just generating code or content for human review agentic AI will, they say, follow instructions, make decisions, and take actions much as a human worker would, without human intervention.

It’s more than just a smarter RPA

Agentic AI isn’t just a better version of robotic process automation (RPA): It promises to take enterprises places RPA never could.

“Think of RPA as a train on tracks — it can only go where the tracks are laid. Agentic AI is more like a self-driving car — it can navigate different routes and situations adaptively,” said Paul Chada, co-founder of agentic AI-based software providing startup Doozer AI.

What makes agentic AI autonomous or able to take actions independently is its ability to interpret data, predict outcomes, and make decisions, learning from new data — unlike traditional RPA, which falters when encountering unexpected data, said Cameron Marsh, senior analyst at Nucleus research.

This adaptive nature of agentic AI, according to Chada, can help enterprises increase efficiency by handling complex, variable tasks that traditional RPA can’t manage, such as the roles of a claims adjuster, a loan officer, or a case worker, provided that it has access to the necessary data, workflows, and tools required to complete the task.

Software vendors are already touting agentic AI offerings with access to those resources, including the likes of Salesforce’s Agentforce, Microsoft’s Copilot-based autonomous Agents, ServiceNow’s AI Agents, Google’s Vertex AI Agent Builder, Amazon Bedrock Agents, and IBM’s watsonx Agent Builder, with more are likely to follow.

So, is it time for CIOs to invest in the technology, or is it better to wait?[…]