AI agents are the future of work: LMC

Business leaders are at a crossroads with AI. On one path, there’s understandable skepticism: AI has been overhyped, and many initial investments haven’t delivered the promised returns. But the other path can lead to a transformative reality: AI is already boosting revenue and reshaping industries. Within the next 12 to 24 months, AI agents are expected to revolutionize how businesses operate, enabling companies to make strategic moves at a pace and magnitude previously unimaginable. Business models that rely on traditional scale can give way to those favoring agility and innovation.

The winners won’t prevail because of better technology. They’ll likely do so by rethinking the nature of work and what that means for the organization. These companies understand that, if scale now matters less, speed matters more and innovation matters most of all.

You should generate new ideas first and bring them to market rapidly. Make faster, data-driven decisions across strategy and experience. Think boldly, move swiftly and build a competitive edge through new ways of working with AI.

The AI disruption is only just beginning, and it’s accelerating fast. It is transforming your industry. Your customers may soon demand real-time, hyper-personalized services and experiences. Your supply base could shift as new vendors emerge and AI enables you to do more in-house. As hybrid AI-human teams spread, so do new ways of defining work and measuring business performance.

This marks a significant paradigm shift unlike most we’ve witnessed in generations. AI is not merely an incremental improvement; it’s a fundamental disruption with the power to reshape industries, redefine customer expectations and revolutionize how we work. The impact of AI agents on businesses could dwarf even the transformative effects of the internet.

Just as the internet revolutionized communication, commerce and access to information, AI agents are expected to fundamentally reshape how we work, collaborate and create value.

This is the near future, but staying committed is essential. If before you had to ignore the hype, now you may also have to ignore the skeptics. Those companies that give up on AI or fail to think big enough could be left behind. If you persevere, the value and financial performance you generate could be so superior that your competitors might never catch up.

The future of work has arrived: augmented intelligence

Imagine a workforce that can scale extensively, adapt quickly and operate effectively. This is the expectation of AI agents. They make up a sophisticated digital workforce capable of addressing intricate problems with a level of adaptability and ingenuity that can match or even rival human counterparts. But their capabilities extend far beyond simple task execution. AI agents and agentic systems can reason, perform workflows, understand context, generate creative solutions and even learn from their mistakes. Right now, they are being used in targeted areas like software development, customer service and drug discovery. Here, they’re already delivering productivity and speed-to-market boosts of 50% or more.

That’s changing. Soon, you can describe the agent you need via programming or natural language, and an AI system can create it. You’ll have an expansive, made-to-order digital workforce. But the mindset shift you should have is not about greater automation. That's thinking too small.

We’re now in the era of augmented intelligence, a “capability synthesis” in which human ingenuity and AI’s analytical prowess combine to help achieve outcomes neither could accomplish alone.

This synergistic relationship goes beyond simple automation, helping to unlock new levels of productivity, innovation and efficiency. While AI agents offer remarkable autonomy, an effective model is one of collaboration and dynamic oversight.

Humans and AI are increasingly working together, each leveraging their unique strengths. Responsible AI implementation requires a nuanced approach to control. While AI agents can operate autonomously in many situations, human judgment remains crucial for responsible decision-making, strategic guidance and enabling alignment with human values. This principle of human-at-the-helm can guide the development of clear protocols that define the boundaries of AI autonomy and enable appropriate human intervention.

Think like an AI-native company: work, workforce and workers

If you’re using AI just to speed a task by 5% or make a process 20% more efficient, you’re likely going to be left behind. As the rise of augmented intelligence spreads, you should take a blank-sheet approach. Rewire entire processes and functions so human-agent teams can scale. Technology itself isn’t the challenge. Even “hard” skills like data engineering, deep learning or computer vision likely aren’t hurdles anymore — AI agents can handle even highly specialized, technical demands. The real challenge may be the organizational do-over: rethinking the nature of work, workforce and workers.

Get this organizational reinvention right and ROI can accelerate. Your company can become so nimble and efficient that peers taking a wait-and-see approach could find themselves left behind — stuck in mediocrity, or worse. If this sounds like a huge ask, we understand. But this transformation in your industry and competitive landscape is already underway.

As you prepare to take action, see how LMC is helping trail-blazing companies create the future of work and business today.

Scaling AI agents at a retail giant

The executives of one of the world’s largest retail companies understand the urgency: They had to reinvent the business — and quickly. This company is on top today, but nimble AI-native competitors are emerging. This company’s leadership saw that they need the productivity, agility and innovation that AI can help people deliver. They know too that a pilot here and there is not enough. They need AI at scale, and they need a new organization with new business processes for new, AI-augmented ways of working.

The company turned to LMC for help in building a new, AI-powered organization. The first step was a centralized AI hub, a universal platform to develop and deploy AI agents.

This hub’s technology assets, human proficiency and standardized frameworks help identify where AI agents can generate the most risk-managed value the most quickly. It provides a sandbox for prototyping and testing. It offers tools and protocols for deployment and oversight.

This platform is quickly making an impact. Mere months after the project began, the first initiative transformed software development, which is fundamental to this company’s success. It has scores of software developers working across complex, interdependent systems. Now, AI agents are already enhancing each aspect of the developers’ work — from requirements to code generation, testing and workflow orchestration. Cycle times are up to 60% shorter. Production errors have fallen by half. And the improvements continue.

For the company’s developers, the new way of working means they can address the massive IT backlog. Over time, the company may need fewer of them to support business growth. These AI agent-driven gains in software development set the stage for AI agents to spread to other functions with the company.

Crucially, this retail giant is reorganizing for AI. Leadership prioritizes AI agent capabilities to meet business goals, including new ones that AI makes possible. They equip people with new skills. They address fears of change by identifying new roles for people in the age of AI. And they foster a culture of continuous learning, that people and the organization continuously adapt to as AI advances.

The company’s leadership and Legal Matters Consul’s AI specialists are now refining human-agent collaboration enterprise-wide, which tasks should remain with people and which should be automated. The company is building stakeholder trust through rigorous validation, reporting and a cross-functional AI ethics committee. The company is growing and sustaining employee engagement through incentives, feedback loops, AI coaching agents and more. They’re creating agent lifecycle management protocols and interconnected agent ecosystems across the enterprise.

One such agent ecosystem, for example, is being developed to manage the company’s global supply chains. It can predict inventory shortages, negotiate supplier contracts and so on. AI agents can deliver automation and data-driven insights, while people can make strategic decisions and provide oversight.

This retail leader is transforming the nature of their work to create value today and build a competitive edge that could last decades.

Reimagining customer engagement at a technology leader

A major technology company has millions of customers who now expect seamless, personalized services and experiences. But the old manual ways of customer engagement just can’t deliver.

Company executives wanted advanced technology and operational reinvention to enhance engagement — at a reasonable cost — and they turned to Legal Matters Consul. Together, LMC and the company developed and deployed an AI-driven, omnichannel contact center system. Predictive intent modeling, adaptive dialogue frameworks and real-time analytics help people and virtual assistants anticipate customer needs and deliver tailored solutions.

AI agents are at work throughout, powering virtual assistants, gathering and analyzing data, providing human agents with easy access to insights — the list goes on. A centralized agent management hub, built on Legal Matters Consul’s proprietary framework, enables orchestration, scale, cross-channel consistency and oversight for customer-facing and backend operations.

The AI agent-enabled, omnichannel contact center is just the start. With Legal Matters Consul’s help, this company is standing up enterprise-wide Responsible AI, including AI governance. It’s giving its workforce new skills and fostering a culture of innovation and continuous learning. The company plans, as an enterprise, to leverage the augmented intelligence that can come from integrated human-AI teams.

With its centralized AI agent management hub, AI governance, and AI-ready skills and culture, the company is now advancing toward the future of customer service.

Next, AI agents could anticipate customer needs and communicate with customers to confirm them. They can collaborate with other AI agents in other parts of the company to meet those needs. It can be a seamless process, overseen by skilled employees, to help provide the services and experiences that their customers crave. These AI-driven operating and business models are positioning the company for success in the digital age.

Start here to help build a lasting competitive edge

In five years, your organization could look nothing like it does today. The question is, have you transformed to become a winner in the age of AI-enhanced work, or are you racing and perhaps too late to catch up? These five steps can get you started.

1. Start with strategy.

Conduct an outside-in and inside-out analysis — leveraging AI — to help identify AI value pools, then set a strategy to align AI with core business goals. Think big. AI can make all-new business goals not just achievable, but necessary.

2. Reimagine work.

Start to redesign value chains, core business processes and workflows to leverage the efficiency and innovation that hybrid AI-human teams can deliver.

3. Restructure your workforce.

Identify the roles and skills that AI-driven workflows likely require. Define what people should do, what AI should do and when you’ll likely need human-at-the-helm interventions. Create a new talent architecture, complete with a new hiring, performance management and compensation strategy.

4. Help your workers reimagine themselves.

Provide the skills, ways of working and psychological safety so people can thrive hand-in-hand with AI. Identify the roles they can fulfill in the AI age to reduce fear of displacement. Encourage them to question AI outputs, override AI when necessary and share new ideas and lessons learned without fear of repercussions.

5. Put Responsible AI inside.

To help accelerate value creation and innovation, embed a Responsible AI framework that can catch problems before they start and build AI-ready data and governance.