How Agentic AI Can Redefine the Future of Business Decision-Making and Optimization
Technology and the advancement of AI are changing the world around us, including the way we work. While these changes may seem daunting, the technology has significant beneficial potential for the businesses that adopt and utilize it.
One facet of AI is Agentic AI, which refers to artificial intelligence systems that can autonomously make decisions, plan, and take actions to achieve goals with minimal human intervention. By introducing autonomy, reasoning, and adaptability, Agentic AI allows businesses to build an autonomous agent capable of planning, initiating actions, and adapting strategies.
On November 6, 2025, GVBOT welcomed industry experts to explore the transformative potential of Agentic AI and its impact on businesses.
Marc Low, Partner, Advisory: Innovation & Emerging Technology at KPMG, set the stage for the conversation by explaining how even though Agentic AI is autonomous, it is still controlled by humans.
“We define where the guardrails are. We define how these systems are going to assist our organizations,” he said.
Agentic AI allows businesses to revisit their operations and understand how they could change their systems or workflows to be more efficient and best serve their stakeholders.
Jason Smith, CEO and Co-Founder of Klue, emphasized the importance of context when it comes to Agentic AI. Businesses can build agentic agents within the context of their organization’s purpose, workflow, and voice to understand at a very deep level what they need to achieve.
“The centering point here is moving from how we use AI to assist with what we do to; they are acting. Instead of the exoskeleton helping you walk, it's something doing the walking, like a robot. But these are for processes inside your businesses,” Smith added.
For example, an Agentic AI agent can help a business make appointments, compare prices, and send emails on its own. This type of artificial intelligence isn’t static, but it learns, grows, and adapts, simulating human-like problem-solving and decision-making.
Smith suggested that businesses can start adopting Agentic AI by mapping their workflows to best understand which processes can be optimized to save time, cut costs, and increase outputs.
Businesses need to make decisions beyond the context of their workflows but in service of a desired economic outcome, Rogayeh Tabrizi, Founder and CEO of Theory and Practice, shared during the event.
Agentic AI can help businesses reverse-engineer those economic outcomes to better understand the workflows they need to realize to achieve their goals.
“You start figuring out what is it the thing that is going to contribute most to your success and then figure out what is the minimum viable data that you are going to bring together in order to create automation.” 
When it comes to adopting Agentic AI, Rob Goehring, CEO of Wisr Ai and Executive Director of AI Network of BC, shared that people and businesses are often slow to embrace the technology due to fear.
“We have to get over that fear. This is a cultural shift, and we can't solve this today, but we've got to get over that and start doing it. Get out there, do something, move it forward, celebrate the win, celebrate the success.” 
Adopting AI is key to accelerating economic growth in British Columbia. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), which make up 50% of Canada’s GDP, stand to benefit with an estimated $100 billion in economic value unlocked through AI adoption. However, 73% of Canadian SMEs have yet to adopt AI, signaling a need for increased awareness and support for businesses to realize these gains.
To learn more about AI adoption and the transformative potential it holds for businesses, read our report, Accelerating AI Adoption in B.C.