Leaders pivot to agentic automation for business value

Nearly two-thirds (60 percent) of business leaders are pivoting to agentic automation to drive enterprise value. That’s according to a new research report developed by Automation Anywhere in collaboration with Forrester Consulting.

The findings highlight the increasing momentum of artificial intelligence (AI) agents across industries, as well as the implementation challenges organizations must address to realize their full potential.

Why are business leaders adopting agentic automation?

The study, based on a survey of global decision-makers overseeing enterprise-wide AI strategies, found that 60 percent of respondents believe intelligent automation platforms are the most valuable foundation for building and deploying AI agents.

Automation Anywhere reports that businesses are increasingly favoring automation-native solutions designed specifically for process orchestration and scalability – outpacing general-purpose AI platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude and enterprise tools such as Microsoft Power Automate and Salesforce Einstein.

Furthermore, 71 percent of respondents agree that automation solutions should augment human capabilities rather than replace them. This reinforces the importance of keeping strategic decision-making in human hands.

Organizations are already piloting or implementing AI agents for internal employee support (53 percent) and customer service (48 percent), with many planning to extend these capabilities to broader business functions (such as enterprise automation and organizational stewardship) in the next two years, the survey found. The potential value of AI agents for areas such as customer service, sales automation and compliance received transformational value ratings exceeding eight out of ten on average

“This research highlights a critical inflection point for enterprises,” said Mihir Shukla, CEO of Automation Anywhere. “Leaders are clearly prioritizing AI-augmented workflows, recognizing the undeniable value of agentic AI. The fact that a significant majority are specifically seeking these solutions from modern, cloud-native RPA [robotic process automation] and AI automation vendors underscores that deep process automation expertise is critical to scale adoption and unlock meaningful impact.”

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Data privacy, skillset gaps and integration complexity hamper AI agents

Despite 74 percent of respondents recognizing the promise of AI agents to surface insights from vast data sets, concerns around data privacy (66 percent), skillset gaps (63 percent) and integration complexity (61 percent) persist. 

Agentic process automation (APA) is designed to balance autonomous execution with enterprise-grade governance and human oversight, making it possible to scale safely and effectively, according to Automation Anywhere.

While challenges remain, enterprise leaders are confident about the transformational potential of AI agents. By proactively addressing hurdles around security, cost and talent, organizations can move beyond experimentation and begin scaling agentic AI to drive measurable business outcomes. Those that act decisively today will be best positioned to lead in the AI-powered enterprise of tomorrow.

Earlier this week, Automation Anywhere announced the availability of pre-built agentic solutions and a new agentic solutions workspace which enables business users to interact with and create agents through a natural language interface.

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