Executives anticipate agentic AI will have faster adoption and higher ROI than generative AI, with 62% expecting returns above 100%

Leaders expect nearly 40% of work to be automated or expedited with the help of AI agents

PagerDuty On Tour — PagerDuty, Inc. (NYSE: PD), a global leader in digital operations management, today released an international survey that reveals how organizations are moving beyond generative AI (GenAI) to implement agentic AI¹ for greater automation, operational efficiency and business impact. The findings, based on insights from 1,000 IT and business executives across the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Japan, reveal that more than half (51%) of companies are already leveraging AI agents.

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By 2027, 86% of companies expect to be operational with AI agents.

To read the full report, including survey findings and methodology, please visit here.

The adoption of GenAI has surged, with McKinsey & Company reporting usage in at least one business function rising from 33% in 2023 to 71% by July 2024. Now, agentic AI adoption is poised to accelerate even faster while reshaping automation and decision-making across industries. Companies are no longer just experimenting. The latest PagerDuty survey data shows that 94% of companies believe they will adopt agentic AI more quickly than GenAI, with 55% strongly agreeing that they will integrate it across their organizations at an accelerated pace. As businesses look to automate complex workflows and drive efficiency, agentic AI is emerging as the next phase of AI-driven transformation, offering faster deployment and deeper operational impact.

Key Findings

• Confidence in GenAI: The majority of respondents (63%) have fully integrated GenAI into their company. 73% of organizations in the U.K. and 69% in Australia lead the charge with 64% in the U.S. not far behind. However, traction in Japan shows to be noticeably slower as only 44% of companies have fully integrated GenAI.
• AI Maturity and Adoption: 71% of companies that have fully implemented GenAI are far more likely to have already deployed agentic AI, compared to just 19% of companies that have yet to fully implement GenAI.
• Strong Return on Investment (ROI) Expectations: 62% of companies expect more than 100% ROI from agentic AI, with an average expected return of 171% on their investment. GenAI has already delivered strong financial results, with an average ROI of 152%.
• Automating Workflows at Scale: 52%, more than half, of companies expect agentic AI to automate or accelerate between 26% and 50% of their workloads, unlocking significant operational efficiencies.
• Future Impact of AI: 44% of business leaders expect agentic AI to have a greater overall impact than GenAI, while 40% believe the latter will prove more transformative, demonstrating that companies are divided on whether agentic AI will cause an industry shift similar to GenAI.
• Lessons from GenAI Implementation: 44% of business leaders cite rushed AI adoption without proper planning as the biggest challenge, which is one of the mistakes leaders hope to avoid repeating from their GenAI deployment. Cost control (40%), improved employee training (37%), and stronger data infrastructure (37%) were also among the top priorities for AI strategy refinement.
• AI Investment Is Scaling Up: 75% of organizations are investing $1 million or more in AI initiatives, reflecting a commitment to long-term AI-driven transformation, showcasing ongoing interest in AI implementation leading to increasing budget allocations.

“Leaders need to provide tangible, quantifiable benefits from their AI deployments if they want to justify the investment,” said Eric Johnson, chief information officer at PagerDuty. “PagerDuty’s latest survey data illustrates how strongly organizations believe agentic AI will help unlock real value from AI and automation, as 62% of survey respondents anticipate triple-digit ROI. Companies that successfully integrate agentic AI into their operations can expect increased efficiency gains by automating complexity and accelerating decision-making.”

Many organizations learned firsthand that insufficient training hindered GenAI adoption and are taking a different approach with agentic AI. Every company surveyed has various plans to implement agentic AI training, with 61% prioritizing organization-wide seminars or structured initiatives. Additionally, 56% of organizations will offer an external course to their employees, while 52% plan to host official office hours and formal internal mentorship programs to ensure employees can effectively integrate and leverage AI agents in their workflows.

Additional Resources

• Read more about the survey findings on the PagerDuty blog.
• Sign up for PagerDuty on Tour San Francisco where PagerDuty leaders will discuss the growing potential of agentic AI in operations. Registration is free.
• Learn more about PagerDuty’s GenAI and agentic AI capabilities.

About PagerDuty, Inc.

PagerDuty, Inc. (NYSE: PD) is a global leader in digital operations management, enabling customers to achieve operational efficiency at scale with the PagerDuty Operations Cloud. The PagerDuty Operations Cloud combines AIOps, Automation, Customer Service Operations and Incident Management with a powerful generative AI assistant and AI agents to create a flexible, resilient and scalable platform to increase innovation velocity, grow revenue, reduce cost, and mitigate the risk of operational failure. Nearly half of the Fortune 500 and approximately two-thirds of the Fortune 100 rely on PagerDuty as essential infrastructure for the modern enterprise. To learn more and try PagerDuty for free, visit www.pagerduty.com.

The PagerDuty Operations Cloud

The PagerDuty Operations Cloud is the platform for mission-critical, time-critical operations work in the modern enterprise. Through the power of AI and automation, it detects and diagnoses disruptive events, mobilizes the right team members to respond, and streamlines infrastructure and workflows across your digital operations. The Operations Cloud is essential infrastructure for revolutionizing digital operations to compete and win as a modern digital business.

¹ For the purpose of this survey, “agentic AI” was defined as, “Autonomous agents designed to gather data, make decisions and execute tasks to achieve predefined goals. Unlike AI chatbots, agentic AI may be employed for more context-aware conversations, continuous learning, and personalized responses for a wider range of tasks.”

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