AI agents are no longer experimental concepts. They are practical, governable tools that organizations can deploy today to augment work, improve efficiency, and build toward a true hybrid workforce. This article explores how AI agents can be governed, deployed, and scaled within enterprise organizations.
Agents Will Lead the Way
AI is here to stay. It is not a fad. The time is now to find your engagement with these new technologies, and agents are the pragmatic way to make it happen.
The idea of a “Frontier” organization is that:
- AI agents are actively woven into the org structure.
- Humans and technology are working alongside each other across various business processes, and there are no barriers between the two.
- Managers are leading a hybrid workforce, assigning responsibilities and monitoring output from agents as they would any other employee.
- Leaders are actively looking for opportunities to further introduce agents into the flow of work, and the continuous improvement flywheel is constantly spinning.
It’s a very idealistic state, but one that more organizations are starting to explore, if not adopt outright.
Does the concept sound too futuristic or unattainable from your perspective? Well, I tend to agree that these concepts can feel like they are “out there”, but let me challenge you to reconsider how obtainable they are for all of us.
What Do We Actually Mean by “Agents”?
Before I go on about how any of us could become a “Frontier Firm”, I need to pause and count how often I used the word “agents” in the last paragraph. Huh, only four times. Well, chalk one up for avoiding term repetition.
That said, let me define what I mean by “agents”.
It is THE most overused term these days, and it sure feels like EVERYTHING is labeled an agent, whether AI is involved or not. I see some validity to this broad adoption of the term. I mean, who cares if we are imbuing a technology with AI-enabled reasoning or whether we are just creating a rote automation with hard-coded logic? Both are augmenting the workforce and taking a load off the human worker.
However, for the sake of this article, I want to focus on AI-enabled agents, automations that incorporate one form of AI or another, whether that is generative, document intelligence, voice, vision, or something else.
I believe that adopting this more “advanced” agent definition allows us to better meet the concept of being on the “frontier”.
Why AI Agents Are a Practical Starting Point
AI agents are a very approachable technology, and many use them as the gateway to more advanced AI applications.
They can be quick to build using tools like Copilot Studio Lite, the full Copilot Studio toolset, or Azure AI Foundry. You can control access, data/content security, and cost (they bill based on consumption), the three top barriers to AI adoption.
Let me be very clear about this. Agents, because of their intentionally limited scope, make it much easier to control what information they can access, who can use them, and how often they run.
This surgical approach to implementing AI allows you to continue with your larger tenant security and data cleaning efforts while simultaneously rolling out AI functionality.
You can have your AI cake and eat it too.
The complexity of agents can differ as well.
Types of AI Agents in the Enterprise
AI agents generally fall into three categories based on autonomy and scope:
1 – Retrieval Agents
The most basic of agents, retrieval agents allow you to chat with content. The content can be any combination of documents, structured data, or web-based data.
These agents do not take any action but simply serve as a knowledge source. An agent to answer HR policy questions or a chat agent that answers questions about your website content are perfect examples.
2 – Task Agents
These more advanced agents build on the chat capabilities by also being allowed to act in one or more systems.
They might be able to send an email, route an approval request, provision an account, or update time sheet data. These actions are typically prompted by a user’s interaction with the agent.
In other words, they don’t act without being told to do so.
If you prefer the alternative, then consider…
3 – Autonomous Agents
Like task agents, these busy workers are empowered to manipulate systems, with the difference being that their activity can be triggered on their own.
That’s what they look for, “triggers”, or events, happening around them that then push them into action.
You may say that this is the hallmark of most automations. True, but here the reasoning behind these triggers can be more advanced.
Instead of just waiting for an email to arrive in a specified inbox with a defined subject line, an AI-enabled agent trigger could read the email content and determine the correct course of action based simply on the sender’s intent, not whether they used the right subject line.
The opportunity for creative automation just increased manyfold.
How to Identify AI Agent Opportunities
So, now we know what agents are, how do we find opportunities to integrate them into our daily work?
Look no further than your daily activities. Every process has:
- Repetitive or mundane steps
- Processing delays because “that’s the way we have always done it.”
- Information or task handoffs
Each of these situations represents an agentic opportunity.
To find them, you must engage business users, but don’t ask them, “How will you use AI in your job?” This assumes that they understand AI and or the time to map AI to their work. This requires time, which is in short supply.
Instead, ask for those areas where they are frustrated or want opportunistic change. These are easier questions to answer and give you just as many use cases to act upon.
The Human Side of the Frontier
This leads us to the final part of this post. Caring for ourselves, the humans, in all these AI-focused initiatives.
Yes, we need to find opportunities to apply agents, and we need to build, test, and deploy the technology– but all of this will be for naught if we don’t also address our needs.
Sponsorship
Make sure that you have an executive sponsor involved. Even if you are experimenting with agents, make sure that you have a strong leadership voice that encourages open minds, addresses any fears that may exist in the organization, and champions the efforts.
Adoption
Agents, heck, any automation, can seem foreign at first. Putting your trust that a routine will take care of important processes does not come easily.
Strong organization change management must tell the story of why we are integrating agents, how responsible AI is core to these initiatives, and, most importantly, how behavior and daily tasks need to change if the agents are going to be effective and not slow us down.
Training and Governance
Agent building is not just the domain of IT. Microsoft 365 Copilot, even the free version, offers the ability to build retrieval agents.
Decide whether you will empower your workforce to create agents. Yes, you can turn this feature on or off. (It is on by default, by the way.)
One more quick complementary topic here. Agentic AI governance.
I’ll keep it simple. Think of governance zones of control for controlling agent sprawl.
- Zone 1 can be your general user base. These folks can build retrieval agents, but are not allowed to share them. They are personal-use agents only. This controls shadow IT solutions.
- Zone 2 will be your power users. These folks sit with business teams but are trained on development best practices and can build both retrieval and task agents. They can share these solutions within their departments once IT has reviewed and approved them.
- Zone 3 is the domain of IT. Here you are building enterprise solutions with full system integrations and SDLC considerations.
You can use settings in the Power Platform, Copilot Studio, and Microsoft 365 Admin Center, including the new Agent 365 frontier features, to enable this zoned governance approach.
Stepping Into the Frontier
Are you ready to take a step into this new frontier?
I certainly believe that all organizations should be actively looking to become more efficient and do more with the resources at hand.
Let me know if you agree and where you are on your journey. If you need direction, I’d be happy to set up a strategic consultation and discuss how to build your first agent in a matter of weeks.
We can all move at the pace that is right for us, but we must move forward, just as we always have, when novel technologies have come our way.
This is not our first frontier, nor will it be our last.
Ready to Take Your First Step Into the AI Frontier?
For organizations looking to move from concept to execution, starting with a single, governed AI agent is often the most effective path. With the right governance and scope, AI agents offer one of the fastest, lowest-risk ways to begin adopting enterprise AI and deploy a first agent in weeks, not months.
