Agentic AI promises to be as transformative and revolutionary as the internet, and companies should be gearing up to embrace the technology and the new ways of working that come with it.
This is according to Aishwarya Singh, senior VP, Digital Collaboration Services and head of Microsoft Global Practice at NTT DATA, who was speaking at a strategic AI executive roundtable, hosted in partnership with Microsoft and ITWeb in Johannesburg this week.
“Agentic AI is a bigger leap than the internet, and what we’re doing right now is just scratching the surface," she said. "We’re looking at how we can improve client experience or improve and automate our processes above basic automation. What I’m anticipating is that new industries will emerge that don’t yet exist as a result of agentic AI. It can help unlock new business models, new ways of reaching out to people and new ways of correlating information and deriving insights from data that we have not been able to do yet.”
Part of a bigger transformation picture
Singh explained that agentic AI isn’t just a product – it’s a way to improve how we work: “The challenge is that people often treat technologies like agentic AI as the solution itself. But technology is only a tool. What really matters is being crystal clear about the outcomes you want to achieve and designing the entire process around that. It’s not enough to say, ‘I’ll use agentic AI to talk to clients.’ You need to rethink the whole journey – from the first client interaction to the final follow-up. That’s what makes it a true transformation.”
She noted: “For example, when deploying an agent to improve productivity, building the agent itself doesn’t take much time. What takes time is getting people to adopt it and to help them become more productive. When organisations underestimate the people and change management aspects, agentic AI won’t deliver the results they are looking for. It shouldn’t be an IT project. It is a business programme.”
Industry pioneers
Singh said early adopters of agentic AI were in the finance and manufacturing sectors. “In banking, agentic AI is being deployed to transform internal productivity use cases, risk assessment and customer experience; while in manufacturing, agentic AI is being deployed across the entire supply chain and helping bridge the gaps between IT and OT.”
She said agentic AI delivered a completely different experience for users compared to AI chatbots: “Where a chatbot is hard coded to answer a lot of the questions, it does not have the flexibility to pick up information from different sources, correlate it and make decisions on whether to answer the query, resolve it or escalate it. In contrast, agentic AI uses natural language, picks up the sentiment of the client and can flag the conversation if necessary, and can pass on the conversation to another agent with all the context associated with it.”
Customer satisfaction with agentic AI shows an improvement of up to 12% in customer satisfaction scores, compared with AI chatbots, Singh said.
Scaling agentic AI
Scaling Agentic AI only works when you start with a clear focus on ROI – what outcomes you want to achieve, she said. It requires extra resources, so you need a solid business case and someone responsible for making it happen. Success also depends on strong change management and proper training. Most importantly, scaling should be seen as an ongoing process of improvement.
Singh said certain core skills should be developed to better harness agentic AI. “In addition to developer skills, every organisation should be boosting GenAI and agentic AI literacy across their workforces.”
NTT DATA is encouraging the development of data science, AI and agentic AI skills in Africa by collaborating with universities to bring new technologies into courses.
Agentic AI opportunities for MEA
“The good thing about where we are on this journey is that everybody is at the beginning,” Singh noted. “There is no limit to what you can do, so this could be a game changer for a region like MEA that is looking to transform and grow even further. Every region needs to take that opportunity.”
Prashil Gareeb, VP, Managed Network and Collaboration Services at NTT DATA, said: “We are investing significant time with clients in multiple verticals across southern Africa, East Africa and the Middle East, prioritising use cases with them to optimise business processes, reduce costs, increase productivity and innovation. As a global business with global experience and regional intimacy, my team is ready to co-create managed agentic and edge AI solutions to drive business outcomes.”
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