Agentic AI is emerging as a powerful force for digital transformation, offering organizations new ways to drive agility and innovation. As enterprises face growing pressure to modernize while controlling costs, many are discovering that basic automation and generative AI (GenAI) alone aren’t enough to deliver material business value.
Unlike other iterations of AI, Agentic AI operates with greater autonomy — making decisions, orchestrating actions and adapting dynamically to changing rules and conditions. As a result, organizations that leverage Agentic AI can unlock efficiencies and respond faster to shifting market demands.
By understanding the fundamentals of Agentic AI, including how it differs from other forms, IT and technology leaders can better position their organizations to leverage these advancements for sustained growth.
A brief overview of Agentic AI and key differentiators
Agentic AI refers to intelligent systems designed to function as autonomous “agents.” They’re capable of performing a wide range of actions with minimal human intervention, including:
- Setting goals
- Making decisions
- Executing tasks
These agents continuously learn from their environments, adapting to new challenges and collaborating across functions to achieve business objectives.
What sets Agentic AI apart isn’t just its intelligence but its ability to act largely on its own. While basic automation speeds up manual-input-focused tasks, and GenAI focuses on content creation, Agentic AI actively orchestrates business process workflows. Provided there’s a strong governance framework with security, compliance and oversight protocols in place to protect sensitive data and manage access, such systems can operate independently.
In short, Agentic AI dramatically alters how day-to-day work is done, streamlining operations for greater efficiency and productivity.
| Key Characteristics | Automation | GenAI | Agentic AI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Behavior | Rule-based and reactive | Prompt-driven and responsive | Goal-driven and proactive |
| Adaptability and Resilience | Highly sensitive to UI or process changes | Slightly flexible, but requires human direction | Dynamically adjusts based on context and results |
| Ongoing Improvement | Unable to learn | Improves indirectly and episodically | Learns continuously |
| Human in the Loop | Human defines rules; low/no autonomy | Human prompts, AI suggests, human refines and validates results | AI makes decisions, human supervises; high autonomy within guardrails |
Its capacity for proactive problem-solving and dynamic response makes Agentic AI particularly valuable in complex enterprise IT environments — where speed, scale, and adaptability are critical.
Driving business agility with Agentic AI
Organizations that adopt Agentic AI benefit from enhanced speed and precision in their digital transformation efforts. By enabling real-time decision-making and automating complex workflows, Agentic AI empowers enterprises to move from reactive operations to proactive continuous optimization.
For instance, instead of relying on static workflows and manual approvals, leaders can leverage Agentic AI to identify anomalies, trigger corrective actions and escalate exceptions — often before issues impact customers or revenue.
The results can be significant, especially when the technology is paired with mission-critical systems such as ERP. In fact, client outcomes from Rimini Street’s own Rimini Agentic UX™ Solutions include:
Approval turnarounds reduced by 50–60%
Order cycle times reduced by 70–80%
Interdepartmental coordination times reduced by 60–70%
Audit readiness increased to 100%
Data accuracy and completeness improved to >95%
This level of agility is increasingly critical for maintaining competitiveness and achieving operational excellence.
Practical applications and success of Agentic AI
Across industries and business functions, organizations are applying Agentic AI to streamline processes and solve operational challenges:
- Manufacturing: Autonomous AI agents are used to optimize supply chains, anticipate disruptions, and rebalance production in real time.
- Retail: Agentic AI personalizes customer interactions and improves demand forecasting for smarter inventory decisions.
- Finance: The introduction of Agentic AI assists with monitoring and enforcement of expense policies and controls.
Ypê, a leading Brazilian retailer specializing in consumer-packaged goods, partnered with Rimini Street to introduce Agentic AI into its ecosystem by layering it over the top of its existing ERP system — with no required upgrades or migrations. The Rimini Agentic UX™ Solution for EDI Resolution, one of the many turnkey business process solution templates by Rimini Street, was proposed to eliminate order-to-cash process friction, streamlining the detection, diagnosis and resolution of failed or blocked electronic data interchange (EDI) orders. With this new workflow, the client expects to see:
- 80% reduction in exception handling time
- 60% reduction in approval processing
- Accelerated time-to-value overall
These examples demonstrate how Agentic AI can deliver significant improvements in productivity, budget optimization, and business performance.
How to lead innovation with Agentic AI
IT and business leaders play a pivotal role in championing Agentic AI, turning it from a concept into a competitive advantage. By aligning AI initiatives with business objectives and prioritizing use cases that drive both revenue and efficiency, leaders can guide their teams through adoption, ensuring stakeholder buy-in and executive alignment.
Best practices for approaching Agentic AI include:
- Defining governance early to ensure trust, accountability and transparency
- Starting with data-rich sources, particularly ERP and other core business systems
Focusing on real impact by connecting AI initiatives directly to business KPIS and outcomes
However, even with these guidelines, many organizations struggle to make the leap from ideation to execution. McKinsey & Company has found that approximately 62% of organizations are still in the experimenting or piloting stages of their AI initiatives.
As these experimental projects aren’t developed with clear objectives or business value, executive teams and boards become increasingly disillusioned by the results — or lack thereof — viewing them as a drain on resources.
In another McKinsey & Company survey, 80% of organizations using GenAI reported not having seen meaningful ROI.[1]
But this is where structured, collaborative engagements, such as those available from Rimini Street, come into play. These workshops provide additional insights and actionable guidance for the successful implementation of Agentic AI within ERP environments, enabling organizations to identify and measure the value of their Agentic AI initiatives.
Be empowered to move from theory to application
Through the Rimini Agentic UX™ Workshop, a complimentary advisory service, organizations can uncover the value of an Agentic AI ERP strategy and explore solutions aligned to their most pressing strategic imperatives. Rather than encouraging the use of AI for AI’s sake, the expert-led workshop focuses on identifying where autonomous, goal-driven AI can remove friction, accelerate decision-making, and improve business performance.
During the engagement, Rimini Street works with stakeholders to examine high-impact areas of friction across ERP-driven processes, including:
- Sales and go-to-market
- Procurement and supplier
- Quality and compliance
- Finance and expense management
- Logistics and fulfillment
- Maintenance operations
- Material and master data management
- Order and shipment exceptions
By grounding Agentic AI ERP strategy in real operational challenges, organizations can pave a clear path from innovation theory to actual application — bringing them one step closer to achieving measurable outcomes.
[1] Alex Singla, Alexander Sukharevsky, Lareina Yee, Michael Chui, Bryce Hall, “The state of AI: How organizations are rewiring to capture value,” McKinsey & Company, retrieved 29 April 2026 from https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai-how-organizations-are-rewiring-to-capture-value
