Agentic Automation: How to Identify High-Value Use Cases
Gartner® offers IT and operations leaders practical insights to identifying the right opportunities for AI agents— explaining where agentic AI is worth the investment, and how to avoid common pitfalls like agent washing—to deliver meaningful business value.
Key Learnings
- Understand the difference between AI agents and bots
- Score your automation opportunities by value and agentic fit
- Avoid over-engineering with unnecessary GenAI hype
- Identify where agentic AI can reduce cost, improve accuracy, or speed up decision
Research Insights
This report may offer valuable perspective to CIOs, CTOs, IT architects, automation leaders, and business operations teams looking to evolve from rule-based workflows to goal-seeking, adaptive systems.
What’s the difference between a bot and an AI agent?
Bots follow rules. Agents reason, adapt, and learn from data. Gartner states that while bots tend to operate in a deterministic manner, nondeterministic AI agents can exhibit varied behaviors under similar conditions, and AI agents differ in functionality, autonomy, and adaptability.
What examples of high-impact, agentic AI use cases does the report include?
The report includes practical examples of high-value agentic use cases for process automation, ranging from service desk triage agents, customer escalation agents, procurement vetting agents, and sales opportunity agents.
How do I know when to use an agent instead of a bot?
The report includes a 1 to 5 scoring framework, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest, for identifying use cases with moderate to high alignment.
How can we avoid wasted investment in AI?
Gartner suggests tracking the actual cost of an AI agent and comparing it against the unique value offered by an agent.
We already use RPA. What might we be missing?
Many processes benefit from a hybrid model. According to Gartner, unlike RPA, AI agents do not require explicit inputs and do not produce predetermined outputs, although AI agents often have goals they are aiming to achieve.
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Gartner, Quick Answer: Start Agentic Automation With High-Value Use Cases, By Saikat Ray, Tom Coshow, Tad Travis, Frances Karamouzis, 27 May 2025.
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