Three quarters of businesses admit agentic AI vision-reality gap

PEX Network’s key takeaways:

• Report reveals most organizations now use artificial intelligence (AI) agents, but only one in 10 use cases reach production.
• Firms admit agentic AI vision-reality gap as risk, complexity, and skills issues fan the flames of poorly implemented processes and automation.
• Agentic orchestration is the new operating model, but maturity is currently lacking as the next step.

Almost three quarters (73 percent) of organizations admit there is a gap between their agentic AI vision and the current reality, according to a new report from Camunda.

The report found that, despite 71 percent of organizations stating they use AI agents, just 11 percent of agentic AI use cases have reached production in the last year. What’s more, 50 percent of firms believe untamed agentic AI risks are “fanning the flames” of poorly implemented processes and automation.

PEX Network’s own industry research, the PEX Report 2025/26, discovered that 40 percent of organizations use agentic AI/AI agents to support business transformation. Meanwhile, more than half (59 percent) of businesses are planning to invest in agentic AI/AI agents in the next 12 months.

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Businesses admit agentic AI vision-reality gap

According to the 2026 State of Agentic Orchestration and Automation report, while many organizations are experimenting with AI agents or plan to, trust remains a major barrier to wider adoption.

For example, 84 percent are concerned about the business risk of AI in day-to-day processes when IT does not have the appropriate controls in place. Furthermore, 80 percent are worried about a lack of transparency into how AI is used and 66 percent cite compliance concerns around the use of AI agents.

Agentic AI adoption patterns are therefore uneven. As many as 80 percent of organizations say most of their AI agents are chatbots or assistants that summarize or answer questions, instead of handling mission-critical cases. A further 48 percent say their AI agents operate in silos and are not woven into end-to-end business processes.

“The promise of agentic AI is undeniable, but trust remains the key barrier to adoption,” said Kurt Petersen, SVP, customer success at Camunda. “Right now, exercising caution with agentic AI means many organizations can’t move beyond pilots or isolated use cases. Without clear guardrails and visibility, agents will stay at the edge of the business. Once a foundation of trust is in place, agents can become powerful multipliers inside governed processes instead of siloed copilots or chatbots.”

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Automation impact is clear

The report highlights that the majority (95 percent) of organizations have seen increased business growth due to process automation over the past year. On average, businesses have automated 48 percent of their processes and believe this could reach 64 percent.

At the same time, technology stacks are becoming more distributed and the number of endpoints involved in each process is growing. In fact, more than three quarters (76 percent) of organizations say the volume and diversity of endpoints is increasing exponentially.

As a result, 85 percent say they need better tools to manage the intersections between processes, highlighting the challenge organizations face in realising full value from their AI and automation investments. 

The rise of agentic orchestration

Agentic orchestration is the new operating model, but maturity is currently lacking as the next step. Agentic orchestration blends the deterministic and dynamic orchestration of business processes, leveraging agents to add dynamic reasoning to processes so they can adapt in real time.

In total, 88 percent of organizations say AI needs to be orchestrated across business processes to get maximum benefit from AI investments, the report found. Meanwhile, 90 percent say AI needs to be orchestrated like any other endpoint within automated business processes to ensure compliance with regulations. However, 85 percent of firms have not yet reached the right level of process maturity to implement agentic orchestration.

“Agentic orchestration, not standalone agents, is the key to closing the AI vision-reality gap,” said Petersen. “Deterministic orchestration has always established structured guardrails. By blending it with dynamic orchestration patterns to leverage reasoning across AI agents, people, and systems in end-to-end processes, enterprises can build a foundation for AI agents they truly trust. This is enterprise agentic automation in practice, and it is how organizations will turn today’s AI experiments into durable, business-critical capabilities.”

All Access: Future of BPM 2026

You asked, and we listened. Business process management (BPM) remains the cornerstone technology for driving organizational transformation, according to the survey results featured in the latest PEX Report. As we look toward 2026 and beyond, generative AI, agentic AI, and intelligent process orchestration are redefining how processes are designed, executed, and optimized. BPM is your key to adapting swiftly and effectively in this new era.

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