AI agents are quickly becoming one of the most talked-about developments in business technology. Like an orchestra conductor, an AI agent coordinates information, tools and systems to get work done.
But for business leaders, the important question isn’t really “What is an AI agent?”
It’s:
“What could an AI agent actually do for my business?”
The most valuable AI opportunities often begin with repetitive, rules-based work that employees perform every day.
Organizations have spent the last few years experimenting with tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. Employees are using AI to write emails, summarize meetings, analyze information and create content.
The next stage is different.
Instead of simply helping an employee complete a task, AI can increasingly participate in the process itself.
And some of the best opportunities aren't particularly futuristic. They’re hiding inside repetitive tasks your employees perform every day.
Most people’s first experience with generative AI looks something like this:
You ask a question. AI gives you an answer.
An AI agent goes further.
You give the agent an objective, instructions and access to approved information or systems. It can then determine what information it needs, use the tools available to it and take actions to help complete the task.
For example, instead of asking AI to summarize a document, an agent could potentially receive the document, understand what information matters, determine where that information belongs and update another business system.
That difference is important.
AI is moving from generating information to helping execute work.
We recently worked with a client that had a very simple business process.
Their team maintains an Excel file containing more than 10,000 rows of information.
Throughout the week, their clients send updated information to them in PDF documents by email.
An employee would open the email, open the PDF, find the relevant information, locate the corresponding record in Excel and manually enter the new data.
Nothing about the process was particularly difficult.
And that was exactly the point.
Each update took approximately 30 seconds.
But the team was doing it 300 to 400 times every week.
Taken individually, 30 seconds may not look like an automation opportunity. But at 300 to 400 updates per week, those small tasks add up to 2.5 to 3 hours and 20 minutes weekly—or roughly 130 to 173 hours per year—spent moving information from one place to another, before accounting for interruptions, verification and corrections.
So we helped the client build an AI-powered agent to handle the process.
When the PDF arrives, the AI identifies the important information contained in the document, determines where that information belongs and enters it into the appropriate row of the Excel file.
A repetitive manual task becomes an automated business process.
The employee doesn't need a faster way to copy information.
They no longer need to copy it at all.
This is where we think the real AI opportunity is
The better question is not “Where can we use AI?” but:
“Where is work being done inside our organization that AI could make significantly easier?”
Look at the processes employees repeat every day: entering information from emails into another system, reviewing documents, routing requests, searching across SharePoint or Teams, or compiling the same reports over and over.
These tasks often go unnoticed because individually they may only take a few minutes. But repeated hundreds of times across a team and over the course of a year, the impact can be significant.
That’s why your first AI project doesn’t need to be ambitious. In fact, a quick win is often the best place to start: a clearly defined, repetitive process where the value is easy to measure and the risk is relatively low.
From there, you can prioritize other opportunities based on business impact, effort, cost, risk and potential ROI.
And not every problem needs an AI agent. Sometimes Microsoft Copilot is the right tool. Sometimes traditional automation is enough. Sometimes the process itself needs to be improved first.
The goal is to understand how work gets done, identify the right opportunities and start with one that can deliver meaningful results quickly.
Giving AI the ability to interact with company information and systems is very different from using Copilot to draft an email.
Before an agent can reliably perform work, several things need to be understood.
Where does the information live? Is it accurate? Who should have access to it? What systems will the agent interact with? What happens if the agent isn't confident? Which actions require human approval? How will activity be monitored?
The technology may be the most visible part of an AI project, but the quality of the underlying environment often determines whether the project succeeds.
An agent connected to poorly organized information doesn't fix poor data. And an agent connected to overly permissive systems can make an existing security problem much bigger.
This is also where organizations need to be careful.
Present has developed an AI Readiness Assessment to help organizations identify where AI can realistically have the greatest impact.
We look at your business across people, data, security and processes, then evaluate potential opportunities based on factors such as business impact, effort, cost, ROI, risk and time to value.
The result is an AI Readiness Score, your top AI opportunities and a prioritized 12-month roadmap so you have a clear picture of where to start—and what should come next.
Because your first AI agent doesn't need to be revolutionary.
It needs to solve the right problem.
Ready to find the AI opportunities hiding inside your business?
[Book your AI Readiness Assessment]