A Practical Guide to Agentic AI Transition in Organizations

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Authors: Eranga Bandara, Ross Joseph Gore, Sachin Shetty, Sachini Rajapakse, Isurunima Kularathna, Pramoda Karunarathna, Ravi Mukkamala, Peter B. Foytik, Safdar Hussain Bouk, Abdul Rahman, Xueping Liang, A. Bailey Hass
+5 more Tharaka Mawanane Hewa, Ng Wee Keong, Kasun De Zoysa, Aruna Withanage, Nilaan Loganathan
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Abstract

Agentic AI represents a significant shift in how intelligence is applied within organizations, moving beyond AI-assisted tools toward autonomous systems capable of reasoning, decision-making, and coordinated action across workflows. As these systems mature, they have the potential to automate a substantial share of manual organizational processes, fundamentally reshaping how work is designed, executed, and governed. Although many organizations have adopted AI to improve productivity, most implementations remain limited to isolated use cases and human-centered, tool-driven workflows. Despite increasing awareness of agentic AI's strategic importance, engineering teams and organizational leaders often lack clear guidance on how to operationalize it effectively. Key challenges include an overreliance on traditional software engineering practices, limited integration of business-domain knowledge, unclear ownership of AI-driven workflows, and the absence of sustainable human-AI collaboration models. Consequently, organizations struggle to move beyond experimentation, scale agentic systems, and align them with tangible business value. Drawing on practical experience in designing and deploying agentic AI workflows across multiple organizations and business domains, this paper proposes a pragmatic framework for transitioning organizational functions from manual processes to automated agentic AI systems. The framework emphasizes domain-driven use case identification, systematic delegation of tasks to AI agents, AI-assisted construction of agentic workflows, and small, AI-augmented teams working closely with business stakeholders. Central to the approach is a human-in-the-loop operating model in which individuals act as orchestrators of multiple AI agents, enabling scalable automation while maintaining oversight, adaptability, and organizational control.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Artificial Intelligence Applications Impact of AI and Big Data on Business and Society Robotic Process Automation Applications

Publication details

Journal / source
arXiv (Cornell University)
Publication date
27 January 2026
Language
EN
Document type
Preprint