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Posted 23rd January 2025
The rapid rate of development for applications of AI in the modern workplace has been phenomenal. Importantly, it shows no signs of slowing down in 2025 with agentic AI and the use of AI agents predicted to become widely available and established across all IT environments this year.
So, what exactly is agentic AI technology? How do AI Agents work? And how can you get the most from AI agents in the most efficient and secure way?
BCN knows that navigating any changes in the tech you rely on can often be overwhelming and a big challenge to navigate whilst taking care of your business. That’s why we look to create data and AI resources that will inform, educate and guide businesses for the best foundation to work from when investigating any new technology.
Last year saw dedicated business applications of AI emerge through Microsoft Copilot that have had an incredibly valuable and transformative effect on the workflows and processes of thousands of organisations in this country. A 2024 study stated that Microsoft 365 Copilot can drive an astonishing 353% return on investment within 3 years for SMEs, reinforcing how essential it can be for maintaining a competitive edge in every space too.
It’s always tempting to think of the development of AI in human terms, with additional features evolving over new generations as a result of its uses and the environment it operates in. Although this may seem rather grand, for agentic AI and AI agents it does present a simple way to understand exactly how it can help in a business setting.
Quite simply, it delivers an assistant that comprehensively understands your business straight away.
Agentic AI is concerned with achieving set goals using all the data and information available to it. It’s able to put things into context for users and access several sources at the same time to action tasks automatically without user input, sourcing relevant insights in an instant when requested. With 70% of employees suggesting that they would welcome AI applications to lessen their workload through automated tasks, the benefits of the Agentic Era look to be extremely relevant for the modern workplace in lots of ways.
An AI agent harnesses the power of agentic AI technology in a customisable way to enhance productivity, facilitate much greater collaboration and utilise all of the content and data that a company uses every day, for every task. Thinking in human terms once again, an AI agent is your very own assistant that will align with your own processes to not only answer questions but actively do useful things for you, unprompted. And you can also choose to have several AI agents working together at once too.
AI agents operate within the framework that is set for them, interacting with the environment and data sources that they need to do their job. They gather and process information from the data within your business, make decisions on what is relevant, perform tasks automatically and request user input to clarify or develop their roles.
Most importantly, AI agents can adjust their behaviour, using memory and machine learning to continually improve efficiency and surface patterns within data that can be valuable to the team members that use them.
Microsoft has emerged as the innovative leader for applied uses of agentic AI across their entire product suite, and 2025 promises even more progress. The business applications and tools of Microsoft 365 are proving to be the perfect environment for the maximised value of and benefits from agentic AI to a whole host of businesses. Crucially, this capability has been rolled out, or is in the roadmap, for 365 subscribers to benefit from automatically.
It’s always useful to see how this tech works in context on specific use cases, roles and business activity. Here are just a few examples that should help cement an overall understanding, using the familiar Microsoft 365 suite of apps and tools for some different industries & spaces.
This AI agent could automate a range of critical tasks in project management that deal with creating project plans, assigning tasks across various roles & subcontractors and actively tracking progress with alerts, updates & notifications.
The AI agent would use a combination of Planner for management, Teams for communication & collaboration and SharePoint to access and process documents and resource data on the project. It could even implement Power Apps to automate certain workflows and tasks as a further development.
A facilitator AI agent could effectively manage the preparation and actions for meeting agendas, summarising the topics discussed and assigning responsibility to key stakeholders. All the actioned items and concerns can be tracked and followed up where necessary too.
Again, this would all be made possible by giving the agent access to Teams for meeting content, Outlook for invites and calendar integrations across all attendees and SharePoint for vital data and documents discussed and reviewed.
This AI agent could automate HR tasks and processes to empower employees with greater information access at all times. Employee holiday requests can be logged for approval, benefits information can be viewed, and personal information updated in a simple and fast way without the need for intervention from HR staff. It could even be applied to automate onboarding procedures for new staff members with access to company training manuals & policies, and form-filling all automated.
This would incorporate a combination of tools using Teams for collaboration, SharePoint for secure personal information access & management and even Stream to provide training videos and resources in a self-managed way.
Ultimately, you know your business best, and as you start to work with AI Agents, you will undoubtedly identify how they can go further to help you. Microsoft Copilot Studio provides the opportunity to create your own AI agent for these cases in simple, user-friendly steps using plain language instructions.
You can simply describe what you need to achieve, and the solution will be built for you to test, with infinite ways to configure and iterate for the best results possible. The whole process is intuitive and seamless and can often open entirely new opportunities for user-led business insight from the very beginning.
It’s understandable that there will be some elements of anxiety and uncertainty surrounding the security of your data with agentic AI and AI agents. It’s clear that we are all operating in an unprecedented period of enhanced cyber security due to the increasingly high volume and sophisticated nature of the attacks and threats received.
Utilising AI agents through an existing Microsoft infrastructure goes a very long way to alleviating those fears. The robust standards and industry-leading cyber security tools that protect your data, manage access, detect threats and ensure regulatory compliance are all covered with your existing licence subscription and extended to the AI agent operation across the tools it uses.
Aligned with the knowledge, experience and cyber security integration capabilities of a Managed Service Provider such as BCN, this can ensure that you remain as protected as possible, with all your staff up to date on the measures to take in their work roles too.
BCN is one of the UK’s leading Microsoft partner, fully accredited with all 6 partner designations across the Microsoft cloud. The ongoing research, development, deployment and maintenance experience we have with emerging technology such as agentic AI places us in a prime position to help with its application.
Our philosophy is built on delivering exceptional service through tech for long-lasting relationships. We have over 400 accredited team members working hard to service over 1600 clients in UK and global locations.
Contact us to talk our Agentic AI team today to start your own AI Agent journey. They are always ready to help and happy to listen about how this technology can transform your business with our ongoing help and input.
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