Section 3
Harnessing the rapid rise of agentic AI
Separating fact from fiction
of organizations expect to be using AI agents by 2027, up from 15% today.
of IT executives say that current infrastructure cannot support agentic AI.
of business executives (vs. 30% of IT executives) believe they have already launched agentic AI pilot projects.
of IT executives (vs. 67% of business executives) say that agentic AI adoption will increase job displacement fears.
Agentic AI is building momentum. Just 15% of organizations are currently using AI agents, but adoption rates are expected to jump to 94% by 2027. Despite the excitement, organizations face barriers to adoption and must work out how to quantify the impact on their operations.
At ServiceNow, an "agentic workforce" will take on some of the mundane, repetitive tasks that take up so much time, freeing up humans for more fulfilling responsibilities. “We’ve brought AI agents into workflows to fully reimagine our customer support process," says Romack. "And for performance use cases — not response but complete resolution — we’ve reduced the time by more than 50%.”
Innovation Leaders say that agentic AI will have the biggest impact on the following areas of the business:
1. Improving skills shortages2. Offering dynamic pricing and revenue optimization3. Creating hyper-personalized customer interactions / Improving IT and security automation
But business functions disagree about agentic AI technologies. Business executives, in particular, seem to be feeling the pressure to implement agentic AI quickly: 73% believe that a failure to adopt agentic AI in the next 12 months will harm business. But 43% of IT executives say their organization’s current infrastructure is not able or has limited capability to support the technology.
Business executives are more likely than IT executives to think they have made significant progress in many areas of agentic AI adoption. With the launch of pilot projects and AI prototypes, for example, 44% of business executives believe their organizations have already made significant progress compared with 30% of IT executives. This suggests that business and IT executives have different views about how far their organizations have advanced in their agentic AI efforts (Figure 9).
Innovation Leaders have prioritized three areas to progress: revising service models, identifying use cases and solutions and securing executive buy-in and leadership support for agentic AI.
Figure 9:Business and IT executives disagree about agentic AI progress
Q: How much progress has your organization made in the following areas to prepare for agentic AI? (Significant progress)
Business and IT executives disagree on agentic AI’s workforce and business impact. Executives in business roles are much more likely to be concerned about the effect of agentic AI on the workforce: 67% say that agentic AI has increased job displacement fears and uncertainty in their organizations compared with just 27% of IT executives.
“We’re spending a lot of time ensuring that our people are upskilled and reskilled to the right level,” says Dirk Olufs at DHL Express. “It’s the best way for us to avoid attrition and the best way to achieve retention because people have a question mark [about agentic AI] with all the speed of development and change. Do they have the right skill set for the future? Do they have the right skill set now?”
Executives in business roles also have more ethical concerns about agentic AI: 76% say they agree that agentic AI carries with it increased ethical and AI trustworthiness issues due to biases and hallucinations. Only 28% of IT executives share this view.
