“Agentic Business Transformation” with Bryan Goode from Microsoft & Mitch Ashley

Hey everyone, it's Alan Shimmel, founder, CEO here at Techstrong, and welcome to our continuing series on, uh, ai, AI in the future here with, uh, the Microsoft team and our FU analyst team, as well as techron. In this next episode, though, we're gonna be joined by Mitchell Ashley, uh, of Futurum, who leads the software development lifecycle and building segment at futurum. And Mitchell is talking with Brian Good, whose official titles is Corporate Vice President and Agents marketing.

But Brian is really here talking about agent apps in chat, and it, it's, uh, you know, obviously very hot topic as we move to a n ai workflow based basis. So let's join Mitchell and Brian here with me, and it's great to have them both. My name is Mitch Ashley, and I'm VP of practice, lead of the software Lifecycle engineering practice at RUM Research.

And, and Mitch, uh, my name is Brian. Good. Uh, I lead the business applications and agents team, uh, here at Microsoft.

Uh, let's start here. 2025 is described as kinda an inflection point for AI adoption. What do you think are the most significant changes that, uh, you've seen in organizations as they're using AI and agents in their businesses this year?

Well, I absolutely agree. 2025 is really an inflection point, and we'll sometimes describe it as the year that the Frontier Firm was born. And you might've heard us talk about the Frontier Firm before.

It's this idea of companies that are putting AI really at the heart of their business, and it's enabling them to do things like reinvent the way they engage with the customers or transform their business processes inside their company, um, and beyond. And it's really the year these frontier firms are sort of rising up and a time when I think we can learn a lot from these early adopters and understanding how they're deploying ai, how they're being successful, and then figure out how we can take those insights and bring 'em to, to our own businesses. That's where you can have outsized impact As AI transforms those functions.

What do you see as the new patterns of work that's enabled by copilot and agents as customers start leveraging the technology for productivity or innovation? I'll tell you what, I have studied these frontier firms as they, as they come up, and there's really three patterns that I see across these frontier firms. The first is really enabling, uh, employee productivity.

So they give every employee, uh, an AI assistant like Microsoft 365 copilot, and it helps them, those employees be more productive. The second pattern that I see is, uh, really these frontier firms deploying AI to automate existing business processes. So, for example, they already have a way of handling expense reports, but they can use AI to speed that up and reduce costs, and, and that certainly results in some benefits to the customer.

The third pattern is really where a customer like starts from the beginning, let's say from first principles, and they reimagine a function altogether. They'll reimagine what it means to engage with a customer who has a, uh, an issue with their product, and they'll put agents at the heart of that. Most companies can only take on one or two of these functional transformation projects at, at any given time because it's a big lift.

Again, it's reimagining a function from first principles. It's not just taking existing processes and and applying AI to them. How far along do you think most organizations are in their adoption cycle for generative ai?

Well, I think we're still in early innings, uh, that there's no doubt about that. Um, you know, customers are starting to deploy AI and different functions as we talked about, but certainly they haven't, in most cases, fully realized kind of the transformation that AI can have across their organization. So it's still very early innings, but I'd say we see very promising signs and, and green shoots, uh, of that, uh, of that adoption and success.

Uh, again, the key really here is to start function by function, think about a particular function, think about peeling it back to the business processes you need to go focus on. That's where you can have outsized impact. How do you define AgTech business applications and why are they critical for organizations?

Yeah, well, I do have a vision that there's, uh, the application of old is really transformed with ai, and we call that new type of application, the AG agentic business application, and the ag agentic biz app includes the assistant for the human to start to use. It includes prebuilt business process agents that basically take the drudgery out of work, and then it's built on a data foundation. And so instead of being limited just to the data that, you know, maybe is in the CRM system or the ERP system, it joins that with data from other lines of business systems and even productivity data so that you have a rich set of data that you can build agents on top of, and you can empower your humans to get better decisions from.

And so this idea that brings all those together, the assistant, the agent, the application, I call the AG Agentic biz app, and I think it's a really big idea. Let's talk about why you're optimistic about the future of ag agentic business applications. I have a lot, lot of optimism here because number one, I see customers already deploying these applications, uh, and and really transforming their business.

So I already see people starting to get great benefit from it, but at a more human level, the thing that gets me excited is like, if you think about every one of our jobs, like there's a lot of stuff that we end up having to do that really isn't adding joy to our lives. Uh, you know, me doing an expense report or, you know, filling out a CRM uh, system, you know, with an update from a customer call, those aren't the things that, uh, that make us, uh, unique. Those aren't the things that bring joy.

Those aren't really even things that add business value collectively. But if we can delegate those things to AI and agents, I think we'll enable ourselves to actually go do far bigger things and really take our ambition to the next level. And so I am absolutely excited for what the future holds.

Yeah, I'd love to hear about how you see the role of AI agents evolving just over the next few years, especially as organizations start to redesign core business processes drive outcomes for efficiency. How, how do you see this taking shape? Yeah, great question.

You know, odd, I I would say that we really believe there's a spectrum, uh, of, of agents. You know, there will be very simple agents that someone will use that might just be grounded on a particular knowledge source and help you, you know, understand, you know, what might might happen from that, uh, from that knowledge source. Then there'll be task-based agents, and then there'll also be more sophisticated, fully autonomous agents as well.

And this more autonomous agents is where you can unlock a lot of business value. These are agents that, you know, aren't called by a by a human. They're just running independently.

They're triggered based on different actions, and they can really automate business processes in some cases from start to finish. So we believe there's this spectrum of agents, and today, I'd say most agentic use cases start with those more simple kind of knowledge agents. Uh, but increasingly we're seeing customers bring in these task-based agents and autonomous agents, uh, to automate, uh, things, uh, end to end.

How about the C-suite leaders? How should they be thinking about investing in agent technologies for long-term value? Well, every C-suite leader I talk to today is already in on ai.

Like every one of them recognizes that it's a competitive advantage if they can move quickly, and if they don't move quickly, they recognize it could be a disruptive force in their industry. But let's face it, ai, it's transforming businesses as transforming functions. It's, it's gonna reshape entire industries.

And every C-suite leader I talk to recognizes that and wants on board. What they're looking for though, is a partner. They're looking for the tech, of course, they wanna make sure they've got the right tech, but they're also looking for a partner to help them shape this in their business.

And that's where Microsoft, I think, comes into play. Uh, you know, we're not a large scale model maker, uh, but we do take the best of the models and bring 'em into the workplace, uh, so that companies can use them. You know, we talk about AI being a disruptive technology, probably because it seems that it really can and will affect every part of our work, our lives, et cetera, certainly is affecting how we create software with new concepts like agents, agent ai.

Curious about your thoughts. Share with us, how does Microsoft view what the transformation is going to be like with AI really having an impact and a big benefit to businesses? Yeah.

Uh, many industry, uh, pundits will say that this move to AI agents is gonna, uh, lead to the rise of, uh, uh, more consumption like models or outcome-based pricing. And I think they're right. That's definitely a direction that I see the world shifting as well.

Um, the only thing I would, uh, balance that with is that many customers are still, uh, you know, most comfortable buying things on a a per user or per per seat basis. And so, uh, the approach I'm taking is, you know, how do I enable customers to buy offerings that they're comfortable with? And that's typically like a per user or some type of per tenant type of type of license, while giving them the flexibility to, to grow and shift into more consumption models as they, uh, as their business changes.

And so, uh, we are at an inflection point, just as we said, and I think one of the things that will change is the business model over time. Talk some more about agen. We think about agents operating on their own or more autonomously, and why, why is that an important thing that organizations are looking to move to?

Yeah, it really comes down to business priorities. Like every business leader I talk to wants to find ways to grow their top line revenue, or they're looking for ways to automate, uh, things that, that they're doing so that they can save money or redirect folks to, uh, focus on more important activities. And, you know, autonomous agents really fit that bill.

You know, imagine in the sales context, you can have an autonomous agent, you know, going through marketing leads and qualifying them before handing them off to a human seller. That's work that wouldn't have gotten done in the past or would've been done by a human seller, uh, and have been relatively low value, not something they, they really enjoyed, uh, about their job. And so an AI agent can do that and add great value to the company, and again, help that company grow on the top line.

Talk about Microsoft, uh, and the offering that you have in the context of an end-to-end tool toolkit, if you will. Yeah. For functional transformation, You know, as far as the toolkit goes, we really believe that there's three essential parts to it.

The first is we think every employee should have an AI assistant in our case, uh, that's Microsoft 365 copilot. Uh, think of that as a productivity tool to help every employee work get through their workday and get more done. It can be quite transformative.

That next step up is where agents come into the picture, and I describe agents as really being for every business process or workflow in an organization. And we have, uh, a toolkit that enables customers to build their own agents. It starts with co-pilot studio, but even extends into our Azure capabilities with our Azure AI Foundry product.

So agents pair very nicely with that co-pilot that I described first, and then the final step is where the system of record becomes the system of action. And we'll sometimes call this the a agentic business application where you take a CRM system and you add agents and an assistant to it to really transform those three are the essential ingredients or building blocks for AI transformation, um, in a frontier firm or any business at this point. That's a great term.

Can you share some examples of how Microsoft customers are already seeing measurable impact from adopting agent business applications? Yeah, one example I I think I can give is lifetime. Uh, they're a great customer of ours, uh, based here in the United States.

They've used us as part of their finance and supply chain operations, and they've, uh, deployed agents to basically speed up how they handle and process e-commerce orders. In fact, I think it saved them 95%, uh, in terms of their order, e-commerce, order efficiency by deploying, uh, AI agents and agentic business applications to solve that problem. So I think that's a great example.

We also have, uh, another great example, uh, from Europe, um, uh, a large utility named Enco who deployed a multi-language, uh, AI agent, uh, for their customers to help them scale and address customer questions. Uh, it's a pretty cool solution, saves them time and again, helps them scale up. Now it's a, it's a really exciting time in the world of agents.

You know, you talked about the C-suite and kind of the three phases in this adoption curve as we adopt ai. What, what kinda recommendations do you have of like, how to get started? Well, maybe near some of the near term activities?

Well, you know, as I said earlier, I think AI is gonna transform every company, every function, every industry. And that opportunity is so vast, sometimes it's hard to know where to get started. And I've got two bits of advice really there to, to anybody that, uh, that is, is pondering that question.

Uh, the first thing is, again, start with a function. Pick a function that you want to go after and then peel it like an onion. You know, go look at the next layer, which are the business processes in that function that you can apply, uh, a copilot or agents to, to really transform.

The other thing though is like, don't get into analysis paralysis. Just pick a business process. Just go pick a business process to get started with.

And as you learn from applying AI to that business process, whatever it is, whatever your thorniest business process is, go apply AI to it. You are gonna learn, your organization's gonna learn, your culture will adapt, and then it will flow from there. So the opportunity is so vast.

Don't let that keep you from getting started. You gotta get started, start simple, pick one thing and go from there. So as we move to an agentic business environment, let's talk about the people.

How do you see the role of human creativity, judgment, leadership? How is that gonna evolve? Yeah, well, that's an excellent question, and one of the things that we'll often talk about is how AI and frontier firms is gonna transform the way we work.

It's gonna change, uh, the org chart into more of a work chart. Uh, we sometimes talk about, uh, a frontier firms taking on the Hollywood model where individuals will swarm around a problem, like focus on a problem and then disband, uh, you know, uh, when the, you know, once they've got a solution. And so it's absolutely gonna change the way we work with others inside the workplace.

It also, I think, is gonna give rise to a new idea that we call an agent boss. And you can imagine, just as a people manager today might take work and delegate it to different humans on their team, uh, you know, resolve conflicts and sort of manage performance. Every one of us in the future is gonna do that, but not just with humans, but also with agents.

So imagine taking a business problem, breaking it up into pieces, delegating it to agents or agents, uh, on your team, resolving conflicts that might come up, applying human judgment. Uh, it's gonna be an absolutely transformational moment, and I'm really excited about it. I, I really believe that, you know, there is still a huge opportunity for humans with human ambition to go do great work amplified by ai.

Talk a little about, about how you see the, the difference in, in the working together between applications, assistance agents, the different technologies. Well, that's an excellent question. And you know, we really have this complete toolkit that spans everything from the assistant to the agent to the application.

And I think those three things work together in a symbiotic way. As an example, you can imagine that I might go to my assistant and, you know, ask a simple question, my AI assistant like Microsoft 365 co-pilot and ask a question about, you know, uh, summarize the emails or help me respond to the emails I've got. Or I might use an agent to update a CRM record after I meet with a customer, but I'm still gonna want to go to an application.

Really, that's a purpose-built experience for me if I want a more specialized or fine tuned experience. So those three things really work together. Talk a little bit about the industries or maybe the business functions that you expect to see reshaped first by agent AI transformation.

Yeah, there are three or four, I'd say functions in particular that are, I'd say, um, you know, ground zero for, uh, functional, uh, transformation with AI and agents. Certainly customer service and customer experience is one that is, uh, absolutely being reshaped and say a very early adopter of ai, no doubt about it. Another, where I'm seeing a lot of early AI adoption, uh, is in sales.

Uh, and it's just because, just as we talked about, there's a big opportunity to use AI to basically increase capacity for that organization to grow top line revenue. So the business impact there is undeniable, but I also see it in places like finance and supply chain, where you can use AI to shorten the time it takes to, from an order to actually being able to ship it that order. We're seeing people use AI to improve accounts, uh, payable and accounts receivable.

Um, so we're seeing some pretty, uh, interesting impacts there. Let's talk a little bit more about the frontier firms. You know, they're not just adopting technology, they're also changing the way they're do doing business around AI agents and co-pilot capabilities.

You talk about, you know, what they're doing to invest and support the short term ROI that they are looking to get for long-term innovation. The most successful frontier firms are doing actually is taking a functional approach. And so certainly they'll think about their entire company, uh, but they'll really take an approach that's function by function.

They'll think about their sales function as an example, and then they'll peel back the onion a little bit and understand which processes inside their sales department they can automate. Uh, using AI agents as an example. They'll look at which, uh, things their sales people need help with, where you could pair up an assistant like copilot to help them throughout their workday.

And they'll even look at how they can bring agents in to really augment business capacity, maybe to grow top line revenue or take out costs. But starting function by function has really been the recipe that these, uh, frontier firms, uh, are using to see success. As an example, in our sales organization, uh, by deploying copilot and agents, we've been able to improve revenue per seller in some cases by almost 10% in some organizations.

And, you know, if you think about that giving a seller 10% more capacity is like giving them an additional month, uh, in a year, uh, without actually having them spend any extra hours through the work week. And so there's some pretty remarkable results. That's just sales.

We've been able to do the same in customer service in our finance department, in our IT department. Our legal team has been able to reduce costs by 5%, uh, by deploying AI and agents, uh, within their, uh, within their functions. How do we ensure trust and transparency as agent systems become more and more autonomous?

Yeah, well, there's two things that we want to do to help with trust and transparency. The first is we have a rigorous set of principles on, uh, responsible ai. So for any AI that, uh, Microsoft deploys, we adhere to a an important set of guidelines.

Uh, and that's really table stakes. So that's the first piece, uh, responsible AI and our focus there. The second thing that I think is important is we now have an opportunity to start to quantify the value and the impact that many agents will have.

And we often will call that in the industry, we'll call that evals or benchmarks. And increasingly, I think we have an opportunity to help our customers understand how agents are being effective in their workplace using these evals and benchmarks on real world problems. So for example, uh, we, uh, uh, a typical, uh, workflow will be a sales leader doing sales research to try to understand like how they might want to organize accounts or territories or, you know, reshape planning as they think about the year ahead.

We recently released a new benchmark, uh, that we call the sales research bench, and it shows how agents can actually help sales leaders in that very specific job, and it's quantified. Uh, and so I think you'll start to see more of that and between following responsible AI standards and then using quantitative measures like evals and benchmarks to understand efficacy, I think we're really on the cusp of helping customers know how they can deploy AI in a safe way for real business results. Well, thank you, Brian, for sharing with us your insights and kinda look into the future, what's happening with the Gentech business applications.

Thank you very much. You know, it's really amazing the pace at which AI has been adopted and continues to evolve. The technology evolves on a near daily basis, but at the same time, organizations have to figure out how they're gonna implement their AI strategies and what the business outcomes that they're most important to their business.

I think it's very fascinating how Microsoft has approached the market, both from the standpoint of addressing the individual and their productivity, but also thinking about new workflows, new models of business, but doing that with not a set of tools, but a set of capabilities that provide integration with data process, workflow, and agentic ai. No one knows for sure what that future holds and what an agentic business might really, really look like. But in situations like today, when we remove constraints of what we can do with technology thanks to ai, that's where the possibilities are created.

You know, using tools like copilot, using applications like Dynamics 365 and we'll, we'll see what end users as well as Techn bring to bear in their ideas and how they reshape businesses today and tomorrow. And how about you? But I'm super excited about the future that we're creating together thanks to working with technology companies and with end users like yourself.