Generative AI’s emergence into the mainstream has unlocked a wave of creativity and automation. Yet, as impressive as copilots and prompt-driven assistants have been, they are only a precursor to what comes next. AI is no longer just a tool for efficiency; it is becoming a means for entire organisations to scale through autonomous agents that work alongside employees.
AI-related business revenues more than doubled between 2022 and 2024, rising from £10.6bn to £23.9bn, according to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s recent AI sector study. With digital agents capable of planning, deciding and executing tasks independently, the potential returns could be far greater.
Combining memory, reasoning and tool use, these autonomous systems can work independently to remove routine tasks or collaborate with employees to deliver better outcomes. The implications for workforce productivity – and for the wider enterprise – are significant.
The shift from copilots to digital colleagues
Agentic AI marks a turning point in enterprise automation, redefining the workforce as a blend of digital labour operating alongside human staff. Tasks once reliant on human judgement, such as budget optimisation or IT anomaly detection, can now be initiated and managed by intelligent systems.
The technology is already turning industry projections into tangible results, enhancing productivity, strengthening cybersecurity and delivering measurable returns at unprecedented speed. Its impact could be especially transformative in the UK, where the office for national statistics has highlighted a persistent “underlying weakness in productivity growth”.
Across functions and industries
Across sectors, early adopters of agentic AI are moving beyond experimentation to real-world deployment at scale. In retail, for example, Nvidia’s retail shopping assistant – powered by Lenovo infrastructure – provides reasoning-enabled, conversational shopping experiences. Retailers benefit from higher customer satisfaction, fewer returns and a scalable, enterprise-grade AI platform.
In IT operations, agentic systems can detect anomalies, explain their causes and, in some cases, resolve them autonomously. Lenovo’s Care of One allows organisations to use AI agents to support employees and ensure resources are allocated efficiently. The system can analyse real-time usage, flag under-utilised assets and provide tailored optimisation recommendations.
Lenovo’s AI-enabled delivery platforms also offer a new approach to customer support, with digital agents providing 24/7 personalised assistance and resolving common issues before a ticket reaches a human engineer. By improving the employee experience and reducing routine workload, such systems can cut support tickets by up to 30%.
These shifts are improving not only the pace of work but its quality. When applied strategically, AI agents expand workforce capacity and deliver measurable performance gains. Lenovo customers have reported improvements ranging from tenfold performance increases to 40% reductions in IT costs through AI-enabled device management.
Productivity, performance and ROI
According to IDC’s ‘Realising ROI from agentic AI’ white paper, the three primary drivers of return on investment are operational efficiency, cost reduction and employee enablement. Agentic AI enhances each:
- Operational efficiency comes from automating complex, cross-functional workflows.
- Cost reduction follows as agents streamline IT and service operations, often replacing layers of manual monitoring and management.
- Employee enablement may be the most profound, freeing workers from repetitive tasks and positioning them to oversee higher-value outcomes.
Lenovo’s hybrid AI factory and agent-management platform support this shift, allowing enterprises to distribute workloads securely across cloud, edge and device environments. Such hybrid architectures are essential in sectors where data sovereignty, latency and governance are critical.
Building the foundation for sustainable ROI
Maintaining long-term value from agentic AI requires balancing four interdependent priorities: technology, people, process and governance.
Technology: A hybrid AI infrastructure that spans device, edge and cloud is essential. Lenovo’s hybrid AI advantage and AI factory frameworks provide a distributed foundation that ensures workloads run securely wherever data resides.
People: Workforce development is critical, as agentic AI is intended to augment human work, not replace it. Lenovo’s AI services equip organisations with data literacy, AI orchestration skills and guidance on responsible use, ensuring employees can collaborate effectively with digital counterparts.
Processes: AI agents must be embedded into core business systems rather than confined to pilots, and they must have access to high-quality data. Lenovo’s AI adoption services help organisations move from concept to deployment within 90 days.
Governance: Trust remains central to successful AI deployment. Clear guardrails are needed to ensure systems – and the data they process – remain secure, compliant and ethical.
Partners make the difference
Even with strong internal capabilities, few organisations can deploy AI agents effectively on their own. Trusted partners are crucial in providing the infrastructure, expertise and frameworks required for responsible and scalable adoption.
Lenovo’s partner ecosystem illustrates how co-innovation accelerates implementation and ROI. Integration with ServiceNow brings agentic automation directly into IT and employee-experience platforms, while collaborations with Nvidia support energy-efficient, scalable inferencing at the edge.
These partnerships help organisations do more than adopt new tools – they ensure AI becomes operational, embedded and productive.
Turning potential into performance
Agentic AI represents a new industrial revolution in intelligent work. It is a transformation of scale, scope and speed that will reshape how enterprises operate. The organisations best positioned to benefit will be those that integrate AI deeply into their workflows, train staff to collaborate with it and apply strong governance.
Experimentation is over; enterprises are now in the execution phase. AI agents are no longer a vision of the future – they are the force multipliers redefining business results today. With the right foundation, agentic AI converts potential into performance and performance into lasting, measurable ROI.
Not sure which model suits your workloads? Lenovo’s AI Advisory Services can help evaluate use cases, assess infrastructure and build a roadmap aligned with your organisation’s AI goals. Find out more.
Generative AI’s emergence into the mainstream has unlocked a wave of creativity and automation. Yet, as impressive as copilots and prompt-driven assistants have been, they are only a precursor to what comes next. AI is no longer just a tool for efficiency; it is becoming a means for entire organisations to scale through autonomous agents that work alongside employees.
AI-related business revenues more than doubled between 2022 and 2024, rising from £10.6bn to £23.9bn, according to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s recent AI sector study. With digital agents capable of planning, deciding and executing tasks independently, the potential returns could be far greater.
Combining memory, reasoning and tool use, these autonomous systems can work independently to remove routine tasks or collaborate with employees to deliver better outcomes. The implications for workforce productivity – and for the wider enterprise – are significant.
