Agent hype
Which processes should be agents - and which shouldn't.
Three kinds of agent, the work each one is suited to, and the honest cases where a simpler tool wins.
Three kinds of agent, the work each one is suited to, and the honest cases where a simpler tool wins.
A contextual agent meets you where you're already working - for example in Teams, Outlook, Copilot, Word, PowerPoint, a browser. Contextual agents can handle a specific task when you ask it.
They're the fastest way to put AI in front of your whole team: no new tools to learn, no change programme to run. Your people ask in plain language, and the assistant answers from your organisation's own knowledge and acts on their behalf.
Product specs, HR policies, inventory levels - answered instantly from your own knowledge base, right inside Teams.
Check a draft against your style guide, flag compliance gaps, suggest improvements - before it leaves your desk.
Raise a ticket, flag a maintenance issue, submit a procurement request - through a conversation, not a form.
Set your out of office, book a meeting room, update a record - handled in seconds through a quick conversation.
Agents that manage hundreds of processes at volume - the kind of work that currently takes a whole team. The agent does the heavy lifting: reading, classifying, routing, processing. Humans step in to handle exceptions or validate before anything final goes out.
This is emerging technology, and it is where the serious return lives. Trust builds over time, you start with tight human oversight and widen the boundaries as confidence grows.
Agent reads, classifies, and routes hundreds of emails a day. Humans handle the exceptions and escalations.
Agent tracks dates, drafts renewal notices, flags risks. Humans approve the final communication.
Agent processes incoming applications, extracts data, scores priority. Humans review edge cases and approve.
Agent matches invoices to POs, flags discrepancies, routes for approval. Humans approve exceptions above threshold.
Not every problem needs an agent. Clients often come to us with agent requirements, and we regularly find that an app, a workflow, or a portal, with targeted AI behind it, delivers a better result at a fraction of the cost.
An agent is often the most expensive way to solve a problem a simpler tool already handles well. A well-built app or automation is faster, cheaper to run, and easier to govern - and you can add an agent later, when the process genuinely calls for one.
Power Platform gives you the full toolkit. We'll recommend an agent when it's the right answer, and tell you when it isn't.
Build custom apps for mobile or desktop that drive data-driven business processes. Canvas or model-driven, no heavy code required.
A powerful business-to-business portal product that integrates directly with Dataverse. Secure, authenticated, and data-connected.
Agents can operate desktop applications, but it's expensive today. Power Automate Desktop achieves the same outcome using RPA, at a fraction of the cost.
Just because you're building an app, page, or workflow doesn't mean it can't use generative AI. It's just not an agent, and that's fine.
Supervise autonomous agents at scale.
We use the power of Power Apps to build professional-code apps tailored exactly to our clients' workflows. Agents manage business processes at scale, and every step of the workflow is presented to humans - to monitor, to track, and to step in when an agent needs assistance.
One example: a legal contract workflow where up to 100 contracts a week arrive in a shared mailbox. Our agent processes each one - creating matter workspaces and validating data through external search services - saving three hours per workflow and halving delivery time end to end.
We're working directly with the Microsoft product team on these features. Agents handle the volume; humans handle the judgement - the agent responsible for the work, the person accountable for the outcome.
The Accelerator is our flagship way to find out, but it's not the only one - we also build proofs of concept, single agents, and full Power Platform solutions in their own right. Or learn to build agents yourself at our Agent in a Day workshop. Whichever way in, the first call is a thirty-minute conversation about where you're stuck - no deck, no pitch.
