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2025 was a milestone year for AI adoption. Investment in AI providers continues to surge, and Microsoft has steadily expanded access to AI-powered tools across its enterprise ecosystem. According to Gartner, 58% of technology executives have already deployed Generative AI within their business processes, and this is likely to continue.
There’s no denying that GenAI offers value. It helps individuals quickly consolidate information, review work, and generate useful suggestions for text, code, images, and scripts.
Yet, McKinsey suggests that only 1% of organizations believe that their AI adoption has reached maturity. In the broader context of AI’s potential, GenAI remains an entry-level tool. Its isolated use cases, inconsistent output quality, and limited integration with business infrastructure raise valid questions about its long-term ROI.
All signals point towards the need for AI capabilities that can take deeper root within the value chain, performing specialized tasks once handled by humans and delivering measurable efficiency gains across the business autonomously.
That’s why 2026 will be the year of agentic automation.
In the coming year, more organizations will be using AI agents with specialized knowledge and execution rights to automate operations and drive real business outcomes.
As agentic automation becomes a strategic priority, it’s crucial for companies to establish robust governance frameworks that ensure consistency, security, and compliance within enterprise-grade infrastructure.
With that foundation in place, AI can transform from experimental tool to sustainable end-to-end automations with scalable impact.
What Is Driving the Adoption of Agentic Automation?
Agentic automation directly responds to the growing pressures facing businesses everywhere: tightening budgets, rising productivity expectations, and the constant demand to do more with less.
Gartner suggests that 64% of technology executives plan to deploy agentic automation in the next 12–24 months, driven largely by these same pressures.
Agentic automation offers a more direct path to business value than GenAI tools. By allowing AI agents to take direct control of tasks and tools within the IT ecosystem, organizations can remove countless execution requirements from human workflows.
This not only frees employees to focus on higher-impact projects but also reduces reliance on additional headcount, boosting efficiency without increasing costs.
The shift to agentic automation will reshape nearly every business function. Yet, ground zero for agentic automation adoption will doubtlessly be in IT operations, where automation already forms a critical part of performance and reliability.
To fully capture the benefits of this new era, companies must approach implementation strategically. That means having:
- A clear, business-aligned agentic automation roadmap with measurable value targets
- Investing in governance and data management to control risk and ensure compliance with new AI regulations
- Upskilled teams trained to design, execute, and monitor automations safely and effectively
3 Priorities for IT Teams Looking to Achieve ROI with Agentic Automation in 2026
Priority #1: Identify Automation Opportunities
The greatest impact of agentic automation will be felt in identifying repetitive, routine tasks that AI agents can take over and handle faster, more accurately, and at greater scale than humans can.
For IT teams, agentic automation can take over PowerShell-driven workflows across the Microsoft ecosystem, running daily administrative tasks like managing Active Directory users, updating device configurations, or performing scheduled network maintenance.
Thanks to their ability to make conditional decisions and interpret ambiguous parameters intelligently, AI agents will become far more adaptable and capable than traditional static scripting.
However, automation shouldn’t stop with IT. True enterprise-wide value emerges when IT extends this capability into other departments. Automating routine activities such as calendar management, CRM data updates, and internal communications, to name a few, can improve productivity across the business.
As McKinsey’s Playbook for Technology Leaders highlights, agentic automation success depends on cross-functional collaboration between IT and other business units.
A centralized automation approach, led by IT, ensures that all cross-departmental automations operate under consistent security policies, controlled access, and clear auditability as AI agents begin to collaborate across functions. This is where equipping teams with AI-Ready infrastructure is vitally important.
Priority #2: Build AI-Ready Infrastructure
Operationalizing agentic automation requires infrastructure built for governance, productivity, and control.
IT teams should first identify the tools, systems, and connectors that agentic automation will depend on for its functionality. Within the Microsoft ecosystem, this could include Microsoft 365, Azure, and endpoint management platforms, as well as third-party software.
A comprehensive automation strategy must give AI agents access to enterprise tools while enforcing strict governance controls at every point of interaction. As Gartner suggests, this will require investment in centralized automation management platform that ensures full oversight and control over automations across the business.
Such a platform is crucial for maintaining consistent transparency and governance over what AI is doing, as well as being a one-stop-shop for logs and documentation to ensure audit readiness under emerging AI regulations.
Priority #3: Reskill and Reorganize Talent
Agentic automation will act as a seamless extension of human capability, freeing teams from repetitive execution and allowing them to focus on innovation, problem-solving, and strategic initiatives.
To realize this, everyone in the organization needs to be comfortable working alongside automation workflows as part of their daily responsibilities.
Staff must be retrained to design, supervise, and troubleshoot automated processes, developing a clear understanding of how agentic automation operates within their business context.
Education on AI risks and guardrails is equally vital. Employees should understand where automation’s limits lie, when to apply human-in-the-loop validation, and how to use access controls and permissions to prevent unintended system actions or data exposure.
The most effective approach is to unite these responsibilities under a centrally managed automation framework, overseen by specialists from IT.
This ensures that automation scales safely while maintaining strict alignment with enterprise security and compliance standards.
Bringing teams together under a single managed automation platform equipped with built-in controls for security, compliance, and debugging allows organizations to scale confidently, maintaining both agility and oversight.
How ScriptRunner Makes Agentic Automation Tick
ScriptRunner’s centralized automation platform helps IT teams operationalize agentic automation safely, transparently, and at scale.
With ScriptRunner, you can:
- Gain complete oversight over all automations running across your IT ecosystem
- Implement human-in-the-loop approvals so no new automation runs unchecked
- Configure and enforce role-based access controls (RBAC) and conditional access policies to prevent unauthorized execution
- Maintain full transparency and auditability with centralized logging and reporting for every automation event
- Empower teams with pre-approved, self-service automation libraries that let them safely leverage agentic automation for their own tasks
“As our IT infrastructure grew, we needed a reliable automation solution to secure our processes, optimize efficiency, and scale globally without compromising control.”
Read how Rhenus Logistics used ScriptRunner to centralize their automation strategy.
Agentic automation holds enormous promise for faster, smarter, and more efficient operations, but that promise is only realized when it’s built on a foundation of oversight, control, and enterprise-wide governance.
Step into the new era of AI with production-ready agentic automation that delivers real results. Contact us today.