Almost every organisation I speak with are using GenAI, and most have tried agents. Far fewer can show value. With AI now built into most software and hardware, access isn’t the issue. The value comes from reimagining the operating model, the work and what people do.

HCLTech’s recent Australian AI research into large organisations shows how this plays out:

• 41% cite weak business cases, and 41% struggle to align AI with strategy.
• 75% say chasing easy use cases limits impact.
• 32% struggle to coordinate across IT, data, security and the business.
• 76% say their applications need a significant overhaul to support AI.

Data is the sharpest gap. Agents inherit every weakness in the data underneath them, and intelligent data management (68%) and fragmented data estates (54%) rank among the hardest challenges. Without fixing the data, agentic AI won’t scale. Start by building data products behind your highest-value use cases, with clear ownership, quality, lineage and access. Then move to data ontologies – giving your data the critical business context required for agents to confidently take on work without supervision.

Though the most important success factor is a mandate from the top. Team Global Express is a good example: a national transport and logistics business with a long wish list of ideas from the business, backed by clear leadership intent to transform. I’ll be exploring how they’re approaching transformation of their business with AI, with TGE’s Group CIO, Danny Gravell, at the IDC CIO Summit Australia.

For CIOs, I’d focus on three things:

• Business leadership alignment on where Agentic AI can deliver true competitive differentiation by reimagining value chains, beyond driving productivity improvements by automating workflows – this will help with investment allocation and defining the right value metrics
• Understanding your AI maturity. Across key business and technology operating dimensions, this helps to prioritise a roadmap of areas to be addressed that’s fit for your business
• Consider a dedicated capability centre to build, govern and redeploy agents outside business-as-usual, so natural internal resistance and existing ways of working doesn’t stall progress

The Australian leaders who succeed will be the ones who stop asking which use case comes next and start asking what’s going to stop them scaling.