Although it seems as if industry leaders are only just getting to grips with the rise of generative AI, there is a new kid on the block once again. Agentic AI is positioned to revolutionize how businesses leverage artificial intelligence and will have a widespread impact on human-robot collaboration.
But where does Agentic AI fit into your organization?
What is Agentic AI?
In short, Agentic AI refers to an artificial intelligence model that can act autonomously, without requiring direct human involvement. This allows the system to perform complex tasks, make decisions, and proactively interact with its environment.
Agentic AI creates autonomous AI agents, a new frontier in the artificial intelligence space. Generative AI, for example, focuses on text, image, or audio content creation by leveraging patterns from existing data. Hendrik Leitner, Director of Global Partnerships and Alliances at DeepOpinion, differentiates the two and expands on the definition of Agentic AI in a recent SSON article:
“While Agentic AI is characterized by its decision-making and action-taking capabilities, Generative AI is distinguished by its ability to generate original content based on learned patterns.”
What companies are using Agentic AI? How are they using it?
The rise of Agentic AI promises to shake the business landscape and some organizations are already leveraging the technology. Tech giants such as Microsoft and OpenAI have recently made headlines for their adoption of Agentic AI.
Microsoft recently announced new agentic capabilities to be added to their tools, such as the ability to create agents with Copilot Studio and the introduction of new autonomous agents within their Dynamics 365 platform. Regarding these changes to Copilot Studio, the organization noted:
“Think of agents as the new apps for an AI-powered world […] They will work on behalf of an individual, team, or function to execute and orchestrate business processes. Copilot is how you will interact with these agents, and they will do everything from accelerating lead generation and processing sales orders to automating your supply chain.”
Rather than adding new capabilities to existing platforms, OpenAI describes their newly announced product, Swarm, as:
“An educational framework exploring ergonomic, lightweight multi-agent orchestration.”
The experimental tool leverages Agentic AI and allows developers to leverage multiple agents coordinating with each other to complete tasks. Tasks are broken into subtasks, and subsequently each subtask is assigned to a different agent to execute.
So, looking to 2025, Agentic AI is set to make waves throughout the industry. But how will this impact shared service operations?
What are some Agentic AI use cases?
Finance
As the most prominent function within shared services, it is unsurprising that industry leaders are looking for Agentic AI’s impact on financial processes. Agentic AI will revolutionize the financial domain by automating complex tasks, delivering advanced insights, and enhancing risk management:
- Financial Planning and Analysis
Agents can continuously analyze financial data to provide dynamic insights. For example, by integrating data from various sources, agents can track financial performance and recommend adjustments to budgets in real time. This will also optimize an organization's scenario analysis, as agents can assess potential outcomes and make informed decisions. These capabilities ensure businesses remain agile in rapidly changing market conditions.
- Fraud Detection
In addition, Agentic AI can optimize fraud detection systems by autonomously monitoring transactions and identifying suspicious activities. This includes flagging unusual patterns in transactions, such as irregular spending or abnormal account activity, anticipating potential fraud attempts by leveraging behavioural analytics, and improving the precision of fraud detection through its advanced algorithms. This allows for proactive, not reactive, action against fraud, reduces financial losses, and enhances trust among stakeholders.
- Credit Risk Assessment
AI will transform credit evaluation processes, making them more accurate and efficient. The agents can assess borrower risk in real-time, updating credit profiles based on changing financial behaviours or external factors. In addition, Agentic AI’s advanced system allows it to analyze non-traditional data sources such as social media behaviours and transaction history to assess credit risk more comprehensively. This automation will significantly reduce the time required to process loan applications and result in better risk management.
By integrating agentic AI, finance teams can benefit from an insight-driven approach, enhanced accuracy, and lowered financial risks, delivering long-term value for organizations.
Procurement & Supply Chain Management
Next, Agentic AI has the potential to catalyse widespread transformation within the procurement and supply chain functions. Here are just a few examples of the tool’s impact:
- Vendor Relationship Management
To begin, Agentic AI has the power to manage vendors, from the selection to repurchasing. By performing autonomous market analysis, the tool can analyze large datasets from multiple suppliers, compare them, and then select the most suitable options based on predefined criteria. Beyond this, Agentic AI can manage contracts with existing vendors. This could include identifying opportunities to renegotiate contracts by monitoring market conditions, monitoring supplier performance, and tracking compliance metrics.
- Spend Optimization
Next, agents can introduce further cost efficiency through refining organizational spending habits. For example, real-time spending analytics allows the AI to monitor spending patterns and detect inefficiencies or opportunities for cost reduction. This welcomes a more dynamic budget allocation, as autonomous systems can adjust procurement budgets based on organizational needs, market trends, and forecasted demands.
- Demand Forecasting & Planning
Regarding forecasting, Agentic AI can enhance accuracy by processing real-time data on consumer behaviour and historical patterns to make precise demand forecasts. This then means the agents can optimize inventory levels by anticipating demand spikes or drops, reducing overstocking or stockouts.
Agentic AI will elevate shared services' procurement and supply chain functions by introducing greater agility, efficiency, and cost savings.
Customer Experience (CX)
Finally, Agentic AI is set to redefine CX by delivering personalized, immediate, and seamless interactions for customers:
- Unified Customer Support
Agentic AI will play a pivotal role in unifying and enhancing customer support by promoting consistency across different functions. The agents can handle routine queries across departments such as billing, technical support, and account management, ensuring customers receive the same level of service regardless of the context. Beyond this, the agents will reduce wait times and increase customer satisfaction via immediate responses, only escalating complex issues to human agents with detailed context.
- Proactive Engagement
AI will also anticipate customer needs and address potential issues before they arise by leveraging predictive analytics. Agents will identify patterns that suggest dissatisfaction such as repeated complaints and trigger proactive outreach. This could be extended to proactive notification to keep customers informed including billing notifications, service updates, or delivery status. This in turn will reduce the need for support inquiries as customers are thoroughly informed.
By integrating agentic AI, businesses can elevate CX through pre-emptive measures, and value-driven engagement which solidifies their position in competitive markets.
This is just a brief crash course on potential use cases for the transformative tool. However, Agentic AI will shape the direction of the shared services landscape in 2025 and beyond. Its efficiency and accuracy not only free up talent to undertake more value-adding tasks but also can make strategic decisions without human intervention.
To learn more about Agentic AI and other emerging technologies, join SSON this January for our Autonomous Finance Virtual Summit. Kick off the new year getting your organization ready for the future of finance, as we are bridging the gap between automated and autonomous- register today!