Celonis, the global leader in process intelligence, a key enabler of enterprise AI, today announced new research revealing a critical gap between enterprises’ agent AI ambitions and operational readiness.
Results from the 2026 Process Optimization Report (surveying over 1,600 global business leaders) show that most companies are actively pursuing an AI-driven future, with 85% of organizations hoping to become “agency companies” within three years. However, a majority (76%) admit that the current process is holding them back.
For AI agents to act autonomously and effectively, they require optimized AI-enabled processes and the process data and operational context that can only come from process intelligence. Without both, AI agents cannot understand how your business actually operates or know how to improve your business. Additionally, 82% of decision makers believe that AI will not deliver a return on investment (ROI) unless it understands how the business operates.
Other key findings from the report include:
– Ambitions are high, with 90% of organizations already using or considering multi-agent systems to automate complex decision-making.
– Expertise and context are the biggest hurdles: Top two barriers to adoption: in-house expertise (47%), difficulty getting AI to understand business context (45%).
– Silos hinder effective AI adoption: 58% of process and operations leaders report that their departments still do not operate seamlessly together, hindering the end-to-end visibility needed for effective enterprise AI.
– Competitive urgency: 89% of leaders see AI as the single biggest opportunity to compete in the market.
To bridge the gap between ambition and reality, organizations need to move beyond automation in isolation. This finding suggests that for AI to navigate the complex realities of business, it must be based on process intelligence, not just performing isolated and simple tasks. This provides a “common language” that allows AI agents to understand the flow of work across departments and systems, identify points of friction, and take actions that drive real business outcomes.
“While business leaders are leaning boldly into the future of agent AI, the reality is that many companies are currently struggling to translate their ambitions into tangible ROI,” said Carsten Thoma, President and Director of Celonis. “For AI to truly work for an enterprise, it needs operational context, not just data. By using process intelligence to give AI a common understanding of how the business actually operates and how it can improve, we are finally turning that ambition into continuous, measurable value.”
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