In just a few months, “AI agents” have moved from demos to the business software companies use every day. We are no longer talking about chatbots that merely reply, but about software that performs tasks on its own: it drafts an invoice, reconciles a payment, updates a record in the CRM, routes a request. For a small or medium-sized business the question is no longer “whether”, but “where to start without getting hurt”.
A real phenomenon, but still young
The numbers confirm it. Gartner predicts that by the end of 2026, 40% of enterprise applications will feature task-specific AI agents, up from less than 5% in 2025. At the same time, McKinsey finds that only 23% of organisations are actually scaling these systems, almost always limited to one or two functions. This is the moment to move, but with method: those who start now gain an edge, those who start badly waste budget.
The mistake to avoid: automating the chaos
The most common risk is flagged by Gartner itself: over 40% of agentic AI projects will be abandoned by 2027, not because of the technology’s limits but because of runaway costs, unclear value and inadequate risk controls. And there is a design mistake McKinsey sees repeated again and again: applying AI to old processes exactly as they are. Those who get results, instead, redesign the workflow around collaboration between people and agents. In practice: you don’t automate the chaos, you put things in order first.
Our point of view: where to start
From our daily work with local companies, three concrete pointers we give to anyone asking how to begin.
- Start with repetitive, high-volume processes, where mistakes cost time: issuing and chasing invoices, reconciliations, capturing and following up leads that arrive out of hours. These are the areas where the return shows up soonest.
- Keep the person in the loop. An agent must have clear boundaries, traceability of what it does and a “switch” to stop it. Governance isn’t bureaucracy: it is what separates the projects that hold up from the ones that collapse.
- Don’t delegate what requires judgement or relationship: negotiations, decisions about customers, exceptional cases. The agent prepares and proposes, the person decides.
On this ground we work with Zoho One: a single platform where CRM, administration and automations talk to each other, so the agents operate on consistent data and not on disconnected islands. It is how we help an SME or a hospitality business start from one or two well-chosen processes, measure the results and then expand, with both feet on the ground.
