{"id":5036,"date":"2026-08-06T12:37:21","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T12:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5036"},"modified":"2026-08-06T12:37:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T12:37:21","slug":"oracle-exec-the-wrong-questions-companies-are-asking-about-agentic-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5036","title":{"rendered":"Oracle exec: the wrong questions companies are asking about agentic AI"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>The question we need to ask is simpler: What business problem are we trying to solve?<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5034\">The SEC should ban the products behind South Korea\u2019s recent market meltdown<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The companies getting the most value from AI are moving beyond AI assistants to agentic applications that can reason, take action, and do the work rather than simply recommend the next step.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Here are four of the  questions leaders are asking today and what they should be asking instead.<\/p>\n<p><em>Instead ask: What business outcome are we trying to improve?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Much of the AI market has been focused on helping users work faster. Copilots answer questions, and AI assistants summarize calls and help employees generate ideas.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Those advances matter, but they also encourage leaders to focus too much on the number of AI agents vs. what they can do. Enterprises don\u2019t create value by accumulating agents. They create value by solving business problems, including reducing payroll issues, accelerating workforce scheduling, lowering supplier sourcing costs, increasing sales win rates, or improving cash collection.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s where the distinction between agents and agentic applications becomes important. A single agent improves a task, whereas an agentic application achieves business outcomes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>Instead ask:\u00a0Can AI actually help get the work done?<\/em><\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>One of the most common misconceptions in the market is treating recommendations and execution as if they\u2019re the same thing.<\/p>\n<p>Many AI systems are already capable of analyzing information, identifying patterns, and recommending next actions. While helpful, this still leaves much of the execution work undone.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Consider a procurement scenario. An AI assistant might identify a potential supplier and recommend issuing a sourcing event. An agentic application goes further. It can create the sourcing event, evaluate responses against business criteria, route approvals according to policy, update contracts, and move the process forward while maintaining oversight and governance.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, AI that can execute improves outcomes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>Instead ask:<\/em><em>Does AI understand how our business actually operates?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Much of the AI conversation focuses on model performance, reasoning capabilities, and benchmark scores. But in enterprise environments, intelligence alone rarely creates value.<\/p>\n<p>AI that drives outcomes needs to understand the context of an enterprise in its entirety, from policies, workflows, and approvals to historical transactions, organizational structures, and the current state of business processes.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5032\">I\u2019m a data center CEO. Communities deserve better partners,\u00a0not blanket bans<\/a><\/p>\n<p>While a model may know how procurement works in theory, that doesn\u2019t mean it understands your specific supplier policies, approval hierarchy, contract obligations, or current inventory position.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Enterprise context is the differentiator. Without that context, even sophisticated models are often just making educated guesses.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>Instead ask: How should these specialized AI agents work together?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A common misconception is that enterprise AI will eventually converge around a single all-knowing digital assistant. Business processes don\u2019t work that way.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Organizations are complex ecosystems of specialized functions, each with unique expertise, responsibilities, and objectives across finance, HR, supply chain, customer service, and sales. The same principle applies to AI. Rather than relying on one agent to do everything, organizations need coordinated teams of specialized agents that work together toward a shared objective.<\/p>\n<p>Consider hiring a new employee. A recruiting agent identifies candidates, an HR agent prepares onboarding, a finance agent validates budget availability, and a manager-facing agent coordinates approvals. Individually, each agent contributes specialized expertise. Together, they move a business process toward a shared outcome.<\/p>\n<p>The real value comes from the agents\u2019 ability to coordinate work across business processes.<\/p>\n<p>Today, we\u2019re entering the era of systems of outcomes, where agentic applications continuously monitor signals, reason, coordinate actions across systems, and help move business processes toward defined objectives.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>That\u2019s why leaders need to start asking different questions. Instead of focusing on the number of AI agents they deploy or the benchmark scores of the underlying models, they should ask whether AI improves business outcomes, executes meaningful work, understands how their business operates, and coordinates effectively across functions.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the future of enterprise software: applications that don\u2019t just support work, but help get it done.<\/p>\n<p><em>The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of <\/em>Fortune<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5030\">Is Elon Musk\u2019s master plan with SpaceX to have rockets replace planes for global cargo delivery?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The best AI strategy isn&#8217;t more agents. It\u2019s better business outcomes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5035,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[211],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai-agents"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Oracle exec: the wrong questions companies are asking about agentic AI - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5036\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Oracle exec: the wrong questions companies are asking about agentic AI - Cross Country Moving Team\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The best AI strategy isn&#039;t more agents. 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