The Agentic Advantage Playbook Chapter 2

Ask Yourself, Are You Solving Problems or Just Chasing AI?

Most organizations think they’re implementing AI because they’ve launched a chatbot, purchased an agent platform, or launched a few experiments inside a single solution. But experimenting with AI alone won’t deliver the end-to-end, mission-critical workflows or the business outcomes your organization depends on. For that, you need to address the inefficiencies that slow down your business.

Intelligent automation isn’t about adding one more tool to your stack. It’s about redesigning how work flows across your organization, how decisions are made, and how systems collaborate to deliver outcomes. To get there, your organization needs to ask a number of questions to determine whether you’re ready to scale intelligently and bring together individual solutions into something that actually runs your business. The following serves as a checklist for APA readiness.

The foundation

Your organization must understand what success actually looks like before you introduce agents into your organization. That helps you determine whether you’re solving business problems or simply adding more tools without a strategy.

Clearly define business outcomes that intelligent automation should own end-to-end

If you can’t articulate the outcome, you can’t design an AI system that delivers it. Clear outcomes ensure your automation isn’t just executing tasks but rather driving measurable impact.

Define the workflows APA is solving, not just automating isolated steps

An agent here or there may create localized efficiencies, but they may also be creating enterprise-wide friction because they don’t move toward overall objectives. True APA value comes from automating the entire workflow, not just individual pieces.

Where work breaks down

Every organization has friction points — places where work stalls or bounces back to humans. These questions help uncover the operational realities that APA is designed for.

Where is work breaking down, despite automation being in place?

This often occurs between systems, teams, or decisions where bots can’t adapt. Identifying these seams reveals where APA’s reasoning and orchestration can add immediate value.

What processes slow you down the most when exceptions happen?

This is where deterministic automation traditionally fails and where agents can make the biggest difference. Processes that collapse under variation are prime candidates for agentic automation.

Where are our teams forced to jump between systems to get things done?

Swivel-chairing is one of the clearest signs that automation isn’t orchestrated end-to-end. Every manual switch between systems represents an opportunity for APA to streamline workflow.

The intelligent model

Agentic automation doesn’t remove humans, it determines where they are needed and where technology can take over. These questions help you segment how humans, bots, and agents fit into place.

Which decisions require human judgment and which you be shifted to automation or agents?

Not every decision should be automated or given to an agent. Clarifying the value of ownership sets proper guardrails around your bots and agents.

Where do you need reasoning vs. precision?

Reasoning belongs to agents, while precision to deterministic automation. Understanding the difference ensures your workflows are built on the right mix of capabilities.

What processes should agents do, and which should they not do?

Constraints protect your organization from risk and keep agent behavior predictable. Setting these limitations for agents is just as important as defining their role.

Orchestration

Agentic automation only works when every part of the workflow — systems, humans, bots, and agents — can coordinate seamlessly. These questions will determine where the orchestrations are needed in your organization.

Where does your current automation coordinate across systems and where does it stop at application boundaries?

If automation stops at system walls, your processes will always rely on manual intervention. APA’s value is highest where workflows cross silos.

Do you have a control layer that governs agents, bots, and humans and routes work based on context?

Automations and agents can act independently and inconsistently without a control layer. Orchestration brings structure, governance, and adaptability to every workflow.

Can you coordinate reliably with legacy systems, APIs, UI-driven apps, third-party agents, and unstructured data?

If your automations can’t plug into systems where work actually happens, it will never scale. APA’s integration flexibility ensures you can automate the workflows you already have.

Enterprise readiness

You need an enterprise-wide operating model to build an agentic enterprise, not a collection of disconnected automations. These questions help determine whether your organization is prepared to run agentic automation as a strategic solution.

Are you building an operating model or just one-off automations?

An operating model ensures agentic automation becomes a durable, repeatable, enterprise-wide capability.

Are you providing visibility into what automation actually does across your business?

Without observability, you can’t measure value, troubleshoot issues, or enforce governance. Transparency is the foundation of safe, scalable agentic automation.