Is the Future Agentic for ERP?

Key Takeaways:

Major enterprise tech players like Microsoft are focusing on AI agents as the future of business software, particularly in customer engagement and back-office operations.
AI agents drive significant improvements in tasks such as fraud detection and procurement by automating complex business processes.
The user-friendly, no-code implementation of AI agents is crucial for widespread adoption, signaling a future where AI agents play a central role in enterprise resource planning (ERP).

The phrase “the future is agentic” has been gaining traction across the enterprise tech landscape, with vendor leaders reiterating it time and again, almost as a mantra. Recently, Microsoft joined the movement by unveiling its own AI agents, prompting comparisons to Salesforce’s AI offering introduced earlier this year. However, there are three key points that challenge the notion of a simple reaction to Salesforce’s move:

Microsoft’s production cycles are known for their thoughtful, strategic development, not quick reactions.
Microsoft has already been a frontrunner in AI with tools like Copilot.
Other major players, including SAP, Boomi, Celonis, and ServiceNow, have also embraced the future of AI agents, broadening the market beyond just Microsoft and Salesforce.

To understand the excitement surrounding AI agents, it’s essential to explore real-world applications. At Microsoft’s AI Tour in London, Charles Lamanna, Corporate VP for Business & Industry Copilot, highlighted a U.S. energy provider’s transformation through the use of conversational AI agents. These agents work behind the scenes, automating complex ERP processes, similar to ChatGPT layered on top of ERP systems, mimicking human actions.

Lamanna also pointed out how Microsoft’s AI agents are enhancing customer engagement and back-office functions such as finance and operations, with particular success in areas like procurement. In manufacturing, for instance, procurement agents ensure the availability of the right inventory, which is critical to product production.

One notable success story comes from Pets at Home, a British pet care retailer that adopted Microsoft’s Copilot Studio. An AI agent was developed to help their fraud detection team investigate suspicious transactions. William Hewish, CIO at Pets at Home, described the AI’s power as “a different level” compared to traditional robotic process automation (RPA), as it aggregates data from various sources and provides insights to guide human decision-making.

“The speed is phenomenal,” Hewish adds. “It only took us 10 working days to build the agent, and the speed at which it delivers insights is game-changing.” Microsoft’s Bryan Goode elaborated on the simplicity of the process, emphasizing that ERP users can create agents using no-code tools and prompts, much like they would with Copilot or ChatGPT. This ease of use eliminates the need for professional developers, empowering users to quickly implement and derive value from the solution.

This trend toward simplified, user-friendly AI solutions is also seen at companies like PepsiCo, where Mamta Lamba, SVP of Global Transformation, highlighted that the Celonis tool AgentC requires no digital upskilling, making it accessible to all 150,000 PepsiCo employees. This vision of widespread accessibility further reinforces the shift toward agentic solutions across organizations.

As AI continues to evolve in ERP, experts like Kyle Hill, CTO of SI company ANS, emphasize the shift from personal assistants to organizational-wide optimization and automation. AI tools now empower teams to focus on high-value tasks and achieve greater efficiency and performance standards.

Ultimately, the success of AI in ERP depends on user adoption. If AI agents continue to make implementation easier and enhance current workflows, it’s clear that the future of ERP could indeed be agentic.