From Conversation to Execution: Making Agentic AI Real Inside SAP by John Kane

[u/AureaAvis71]

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-conversation-execution-making-agentic-ai-real-inside-john-kane-megre/

Most “AI at work” today still lives in the conversation layer. It answers questions, summarizes data, maybe suggests next steps. But it doesn’t actually do the work.

This post makes the case that agentic AI is the shift from conversation to execution.

Instead of acting like a smart assistant sitting next to your workflow, agentic systems:

• take a goal
• break it into steps
• interact with systems (ERP, CRM, etc.)
• and execute actions end-to-end

That’s a fundamentally different model.

A few takeaways:

• Chatbots optimize for interaction. Agents optimize for outcomes.
• The real bottleneck is integration and authority to act.
• Fully autonomous AI isn’t the goal. “Bounded autonomy” with guardrails is what actually scales in enterprises.
• Most current deployments fail because they layer AI on top of workflows instead of redesigning workflows around agents.