What can the Rise of Agentic AI Tell Us About the Future of Work?

Recognised as a top strategic technology trend for 2025 by Gartner, agentic AI is becoming a hot topic of conversation for many organisations that want to harness the potential of AI to advance process automation and drive business efficiency.

But What is Agentic AI?

While typical AI models that we see used in business today require human instruction or a prompt, like Copilot for M365, agentic AI can carry out tasks or achieve certain goals independently. Agents can use information or analyse a situation to create a plan or identify a solution and carry out an action autonomously, or with “agency,” and can even learn from their environment and past interactions to refine their behaviour. The fundamental difference between traditional AI and agentic AI is that traditional AI models require human input to carry out a pre-programmed action, while AI agents require little to no human input to carry out an action and can adjust their objectives dynamically based on situational context.

Examples of Agentic AI

Going beyond automated responses, a customer service agent can interact with customers and use the customer’s profile and purchase history to personalise responses, understand even complex problems and quickly find a solution. With streamlined, hyper-personalised customer service processes, businesses can leverage agentic AI to enhance customer experiences and build brand loyalty.

Agentic AI can be used to analyse vast amounts of organisational and market data to uncover patterns, identify opportunities or threats and create a detailed plan to help empower data-driven decision-making. This use case may be especially useful in the financial sector or other industries that rely on effective data analysis to make decisions and mitigate risk.

Agentic AI can be used to automate sales activity like generating leads and updating lead status in the business’ customer relationship management (CRM) system, as well as carrying out follow-ups. Marketing tasks such as managing ads and social media channels, creating content and analysing user engagement can also be carried out by AI agents. This means sales and marketing teams can regain valuable hours to be focused on more strategic tasks that help maximise business impact.

So, what does agentic AI mean for the future of work?

Increased business efficiency - With the ability to make decisions and operate independently, AI agents can essentially automate high-volume, resource-heavy manual tasks like data entry, customer service responses, reporting, and sales and marketing tasks to streamline business processes and enhance operational efficiency.

Proactive decision-making - An over-reliance on manual tasks can heavily restrict the amount of time teams spend on strategic tasks like data analysis. However, with agents to automate these manual tasks and free up valuable time for human workers, teams will be able to spend more time on data analysis, allowing them to identify trends and uncover important insights early so they can be more proactive in their approach to decision-making.

Growth at Scale – Often times it can be difficult for businesses to find the right technology that can adapt in line with organisational needs. The flexible nature of agents means that they can help businesses quickly scale operations with minimal changes from a technology perspective. Moreover, as agentic AI evolves, so too will the scope and complexity of the work it manages, meaning agents will eventually be able to manage much more complicated and technical business processes and projects.

Evolution of human roles in business – The automation of manual processes will cause a shift in the role human workers play in the world of work. Human workers will likely become supervisors to AI agents, overseeing them to ensure proper use of AI and compliance with AI legislation and regulations as they emerge.

Further, with much less time spent on administrative tasks and other busy work, workers will focus time on more valuable tasks that involve creativity, complex problem-solving and emotional intelligence. This also means that businesses will likely place greater emphasis on their staff developing a skillset that encompasses more ‘human-like’ qualities such as strong interpersonal and communication skills.

How your Business Can Harness the Potential of Agentic AI

Empowering businesses with agentic AI, Copilot Studio, is an element of Microsoft’s Power Platform that enables businesses to create their own agents using AI and low-code technology. Businesses can integrate autonomous agents completely tailored to their unique needs, helping organisations optimise processes, drive productivity and enhance accuracy with minimal human effort.

If you would like to learn more about Copilot Studio or, get in touch with one of our solution specialists today. Alternatively, you can check out our on-demand webinar ‘Copilot Studio – AI, Your Way.’