When Software Starts Working for You: The Reinvention of Agentic Enterprise Systems

A new blueprint for building agentic enterprises and transforming the relationship between software vendors and customers

And Why Data & AI Leaders Must Step Forward—Now

For more than fifty years, enterprise software followed a familiar rhythm—humans logged in, clicked menus, filled forms, chased approvals, and carried work from one system to the next. Vendors built tools; customers bought seats. The dance was predictable and orderly, a tradition as old as the digital age itself.

But something new is stirring beneath the surface.

AI agents, those tireless digital workers capable of understanding goals, coordinating across tools, and completing work end-to-end, are rewriting the rulebook. They don’t wait for instructions. They don’t need training sessions or user manuals. They don’t sleep.

And as Box CEO Aaron Levie puts it, we’re moving from using software to delegating outcomes. Software is no longer a destination; it becomes the landscape that agents traverse to get work done.

A profound shift is underway. And with every shift of this magnitude, a new kind of leader must rise.

From Human Users to Fleets of Digital Workers

For decades, software vendors designed products around human users:

• Per-seat licenses

• Human-centered UIs

• Training and adoption metrics

• Feature rollouts tied to workflows

But AI agents flip this world upside down. Soon, organizations won’t have hundreds of human users.

They’ll have thousands of agents:

• Agents updating CRM records

• Agents drafting contracts

• Agents reconciling invoices

• Agents scheduling onboarding tasks

• Agents summarizing cases

• Agents detecting anomalies

In this new ecosystem, the primary user of enterprise software won’t be a person, it will be a digital worker.

Vendors will sell capability. Customers will orchestrate outcomes. And AI agents become the invisible workforce linking the two.

This is the emerging relationship and it changes everything.

How the Vendor–Customer Relationship Is Being Rewritten

1. From Products to Interconnected Capabilities: Customers will care less about individual apps and more about the flow between them. Your agent must:

• Pull from a knowledge base

• Push to a CRM

• Trigger a workflow

• Notify Slack

• Update a document

Seamlessly. Vendors who can’t integrate will quietly fade.

2. From Seat-Based Licensing to Value-Based Economics: If one human supervises 50 agents, per-seat pricing collapses. We will see:

• API-based pricing

• Workflow-based pricing

• “Per outcome” pricing

• Predictable usage caps

The business model will bend toward how work actually flows, not how many humans click buttons.

3. From UI Design to Governance Design: The next UX revolution isn’t buttons, it’s guardrails:

• Who can an agent impersonate?

• What data can it touch?

• What actions require human approval?

• What is the audit trail?

Vendors must design for oversight, not just usage.

4. From Competitive Silos to Cooperative Ecosystems: Agents ignore product boundaries. They must move across tools effortlessly. This will force vendors to:

• Open APIs

• Publish schemas

• Support shared security standards

• Embrace cross-platform interoperability

In the agent era, the competitors who refuse to collaborate lose.

How Vendors Must Prepare (If They Want to Survive)

Software companies who intend to lead must:

1. Become Agent-First Platforms: Expose every operation—create, update, search, delete, run—through high-fidelity APIs.

2. Build Deterministic Cores with Flexible Agent Layers: Keep the “source of truth” stable. Let agents innovate at the edges.

3. Deliver Enterprise-Grade Governance: Organizations will demand:

• Agent identity management

• Behavior monitoring

• Real-time audit logs

• Permission isolation

Without trust, agents will never scale.

4. Rethink Commercial Models: Move from selling access to selling throughput, workflows, and verified outcomes.

How Customers (Especially Data & AI Leaders) Must Prepare to Lead

This revolution won’t wait for you to be ready. AI agents will reshape your enterprise whether you direct them or they grow unchecked. Here is what forward-thinking leaders must do:

1. Develop an Agent Strategy, Not Just an AI Strategy- Define how agents fit into: Sales, HR, Finance, Operations, Customer support, and Compliance. Agents need job descriptions, just like employees.

2. Modernize Your Data Foundations- Agents need structure, clarity, and context. If your data is messy, fragmented, or undocumented, agents will stumble. Invest in:

• Clean master data

• Metadata strategy

• Unified access layers

• Retrieval architecture

• Consistent taxonomies

In an agent-driven world, data quality is destiny.

3. Evaluate Vendors Through an “Agent Readiness” Lens: Ask questions,

• Can agents operate your system end-to-end?

• Do you support agent identities and permissions?

• Can we audit every agent action?

• Is governance built in?

• Are your APIs complete and reliable?

Vendor selection becomes a strategic foundation—not a procurement exercise.

4. Build an AgentOps Function: You will need a team responsible for monitoring agent performance, managing drift, testing workflows, responding to agent incidents, ensuring compliance, and optimizing orchestration. This is the next evolution of DevOps + MLOps + WorkflowOps.

5. Preserve the Wisdom of Traditional Enterprise Governance: The future may be new, but the wisdom of the past still guides in separation of duties, clear accountability, security-first principles, data minimization, policy-driven decision making.

Build the new world on the solid foundation of what has always kept enterprises safe.

The Leaders Who Embrace This First Will Define the Next Decade

The relationship between vendors and customers is being rewritten in real time. AI agents will not simply enhance productivity, they will re-architect work itself. And in this moment of re-architecture, a window opens, brief, extraordinary, and full of promise, for those bold enough to step through.

Data & AI leaders are the ones who must lead this transformation.

Not someday. Not when the technology feels finished. Not after the perfect roadmap is written. Now.

Because the companies that master AI agents early won’t just improve operations—they will redefine what operational excellence means.

They will build enterprises where work flows freely, where people lead rather than push buttons, and where software becomes a partner, not a tool.

So take your place. Draft your agent strategy. Strengthen your foundations. Choose your partners wisely. Build your agentic enterprise. And lead your organization into the era where software finally works for you.

The future is arriving swiftly. Let it find you ready.

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