What happened
The Celonis 2026 Process Optimization Report, based on a survey of more than 1,600 global business leaders, reveals 85% of enterprises aim to become agentic within three years, yet 76% admit their operations cannot support this ambition. Only 19% of organisations currently use multi-agent systems. Decision-makers, 82% of whom believe AI will fail to deliver ROI without understanding business operations, identify siloed teams (54%) and lack of coordination (44%) as primary blockers, not resistance to change (6%).
Why it matters
Enterprise AI initiatives face significant roadblocks from unoptimised processes, risking substantial investment. Procurement teams and platform engineers will find AI agent deployment challenging without foundational process intelligence, as 82% of leaders link AI ROI directly to operational understanding. This structural gap, where 93% of process and operations leaders recognise people and culture as critical, means AI strategies stall without prior investment in modernising workflows, following Tech Mahindra's recent outline of similar enterprise AI gaps.
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