Enterprise AI Moves Beyond Chatbots Into Decisions and Workflows

Agentic AI for consumers and shopping seems to be in a holding pattern as merchants and LLMs catch up with the technology and security issues. No surprise then that the past week has seen a spate of enterprise AI developments in The Prompt Economy.

The biggest one was from Oracle. Futurum says Oracle is trying to move agentic AI from the demo stage into everyday business software. The article argues that Oracle’s new Fusion Agentic Applications are designed to work inside customer service, supply chain and finance workflows, where software agents can handle multi-step tasks with access to live business data. Futurum frames this as part of a broader shift in enterprise buying. More companies now want AI built into the core platforms they already use, rather than added on through separate tools. In Futurum’s view, Oracle’s advantage is its control over the full stack, from applications to cloud infrastructure to data, which could make it easier for companies to get faster results and clearer returns from AI investments.

At the same time, Futurum says Oracle still has something to prove. The article notes that companies want strong governance, clear audit trails and the ability to manage agents safely across complex environments, especially in regulated industries. Oracle’s larger goal, according to Futurum, is to become the control layer for not only its own agents, but also third-party and internally built ones.

That could be a strong position if Oracle can support openness and work across different systems. If it leans too heavily on a closed model, buyers may worry about lock-in and limited flexibility. Futurum’s main takeaway is that the next stage of enterprise AI will be shaped less by flashy features and more by whether vendors can turn agents into reliable, accountable tools for real business work.

Complex Decisions

BetaNews says the most useful role for agentic AI in the enterprise is in work that combines repeated tasks with decisions that follow clear business rules. In the interview, Opkey executive Grae Gray points to areas like payroll, invoice processing, reconciliation and cash-flow forecasting, where systems need to make frequent decisions inside established constraints.

The article’s main point on decision making is that companies should not treat autonomous decisions as a black box. Every action needs to be traceable, reversible and explained in plain language so business users, compliance teams and auditors can understand why a system made a choice.

The piece also argues that better enterprise decision making depends on using models trained on company-specific data rather than broad internet data. BetaNews says this can reduce errors, bias and compliance problems because the AI is grounded in the rules, language and workflows of the business it serves. It also stresses that human review remains important, especially early on, so experts can check decisions and correct problems before they affect live operations. In that framing, agentic AI improves decision making not by removing people from the process, but by helping companies make faster, more consistent and more accountable choices in complex systems.

The Enterprise Ecosystem

IBM, on the other hand argues that the agentic enterprise will be defined less by any single AI model and more by the partnerships that connect models, data, workflows and governance. A blog post last week says companies will not get the most value from agents on their own. They will get it by combining different strengths across providers so AI can move from giving answers to carrying out work inside real business processes. IBM’s point is that agents need access to enterprise context, operational systems and trust controls, and no one company usually owns all of those pieces. That makes strategic partnerships central to how enterprise AI will actually work in practice.

IBM also says enterprise AI is pushing companies away from a platform-first mindset and toward an ecosystem model. Instead of asking which single AI technology to adopt, leaders should now ask which ecosystem they need to orchestrate. The article says enterprise AI is multi-model, hybrid and spread across many systems, so value comes from linking intelligence to data, business processes and governance. IBM’s broader message is that the winners in agentic AI will not simply build better agents. They will build stronger partnerships that let those agents operate across the enterprise at scale.

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