Businesses are increasingly testing the waters with AI agents, but trust issues persist.
TL;DR
- Majority of tech executives trust AI agents for non-core tasks, not critical business operations.
- Despite trust issues, 86% of companies plan to increase AI agent investment in two years.
- Hindrances to AI agent adoption include security, data quality, and unprepared business processes.
- Complex, multi-step AI agents are still in early implementation phases and will take time to mature.
A poll conducted by Workato, an integration platform, in collaboration with Harvard Business Review, surveying over 600 technology executives, revealed that a majority of participants consider agents more reliable for tasks beyond primary business functions. Conversely, only 6% indicated complete confidence in agents for critical, comprehensive business operations. Nevertheless, this sentiment hasn't dampened enthusiasm, as 86% of companies indicated intentions to increase their investment in agentic AI within the upcoming two-year period.
Over two in five (43%) of those surveyed indicated they rely on agents solely for standard operational duties, 39% reported they assign agents to “supervised use cases or complex, noncore processes,”, and 8% stated they have no confidence in agents for business operations whatsoever.
“This report is almost exactly the conversation I had with [CEO friends],” Workato Chief Information Officer Carter Busse told us. “When I read it, I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, this actually is real data [for] the conversations I’m having where, ‘Yeah, we bought all these Chats and Claudes and Geminis and people can summarize their emails and look up stuff in their calendar and help me write a nice letter.’ But is that real work? It’s not.”
As AI systems that claim to execute tasks independently have gained popularity in the business sphere, relying on these systems for critical operational duties has become a sticking point. This is particularly the case as agents are integrated within diverse professional applications via established procedures.
Busse mentioned that numerous agents presently deployed could manage straightforward duties such as generating IT tickets. However, he noted that those capable of managing more intricate procedures are still in their initial phases of implementation.
“We’re very, very early,” Busse said. “When I think of agents, I think of real work…A real work agent does a multistep, complex process that’s trusted. That’s going to take a long time to get there.”
The study additionally revealed that personnel haven't yet achieved desired outcomes in all assessed areas, encompassing “improved organizational productivity/efficiency,” “improved customer experience,”, and “increased revenue.”. Significant hindrances included concerns regarding digital security and confidentiality (mentioned by 31% of participants), “concerns about data output quality” (23%), and the fact that “business processes [are] not ready for automation” (22%).
Workato, functioning as an integration platform, has a vested interest in promoting orchestration—the management of distinct agents—as a remedy for certain business obstacles. Uniform communication methods enabling agents to interact with each other and with prevalent business applications are becoming increasingly popular.
Internally, Workato employs agents for tasks such as equipping sales representatives for client discussions with data from Salesforce and Gong, or observing and devising strategies to address clients' decreased utilization of the platform, as stated by Busse.
He indicated that businesses are anticipated to keep integrating agents in 2026, though broad adoption of intricate, multi-stage agents might be “two, three years away.”
This report was originally published by Tech Brew.
