As AI agents continue to advance, IT professionals appear to be eager to adopt the technology, though they remain appropriately cautious.
It is the IT teams who are leading the AI charge in organisations – being closely attuned to the latest developments in software and automation. But in truth, the picture is still quite complex. ManageEngine’s new research reveals that although 93% of IT teams are open to using AI agents and nearly 82% of UK respondent organisations have already implemented AI features and capabilities within their ITSM practices, a whopping 92% also express concerns about its implementation.
It’s clear that enthusiasm is tempered by caution – and trust, governance, and oversight remain major sticking points. The quantum leap that AI represents, means that implementation of this technology is incredibly complex and significantly more challenging than many other technologies. Plus, with the technology evolving at a rapid pace, integration and governance frameworks constantly need reviewing.
That’s why it’s important for each organisation to understand the unique challenges, tasks and opportunities AI presents, and align initiatives accordingly. This ensures that deployments are underpinned by good governance, and tempers over-caution which can lead to companies missing out on crucial benefits and falling behind the competition.
The trust barrier
The research found that only 32% of professionals were comfortable with AI running service operations autonomously. Nearly half (49%) preferred AI agents to act with human approval, while 18% would limit AI to a recommend-and-advise role. It’s interesting to note that professionals who had already adopted AI features and capabilities were more likely to trust AI agents and their use – suggesting that previous success with the technology increased trust.
The wariness amongst many professionals can be further illuminated by their industry perspective: for example, those from legal firms were cautious about how AI agents should operate. On the flipside, the healthcare industry showed greater enthusiasm about the technology. While private sector organisations were more open to AI agent use in ITSM than public sector organisations.
These insights suggest that for businesses wanting to invest in AI agents, addressing concerns, challenges and risks are paramount to ensuring AI Agents can be optimised for line-of-business work. Only once this evaluation process is undertaken can the full value and benefit of AI agents be realised, and free up staff to do more high-value, complex tasks.
How AI agents are changing IT roles
Despite concern, the evolution of IT roles is underway and ITSM teams are already beginning to adopt AI agents. This does differ from sector-to-sector however with the finance, IT and the telecoms sectors leading the charge.
Those businesses embracing the technology are doing so primarily for process mining and workflow generation (the top use case for 50% of our respondents). Drafting and documenting post-incident reviews, as well as a complex workflow, were also popular use cases.
These findings point towards a more collaborative future, in which skilled work is still required alongside AI’s ability to automate repetitive tasks. But it’s worth noting that there are some leaders sounding a note of caution: respondents, particularly those in the C-suite express fears that AI agents will displace workers. However, IT professionals have a slightly different perspective with 62% believing that the advent of AI agents for IT service management will change their organisation’s hiring plans, including the number of technicians required in the future. Drilling down into these numbers, 38% of respondents are expecting technicians to supervise AI, while 30% expect IT professionals to see a shift towards taking on more complex tasks.
Though the proven efficiency of AI agents may result in the need for fewer IT technicians, the shift is not expected to be immediate, and IT technicians might be projected to slowly evolve into taking up AI management roles.
Challenges to overcome
Before these changes impact the workforce, however, there are a number of key challenges to the successful deployment of AI agents that must be overcome. In the research, the top three challenges identified were AI governance, data security and privacy concerns (45%), reliability of AI agents (39%) and implementation complexity (34%). These concerns are similarly represented across both the public and private sectors, suggesting that AI maturity is as much about policy and process as it is about technology.
As organisations focus on implementing AI technologies, C-level leaders need to ensure proper guardrails are devised and deployed, so that AI agents are operating within the necessary security policies and privacy standards. It’s not only essential for businesses to ensure they’re upskilling staff to enable them to take their place in the new landscape, but also crucial that the way AI agents process and store information, make and explain decisions, and enact tasks is held to a high standard.
AI agents can make a massive difference to the way IT service management is run and delivered, speeding up low-value tasks and enabling more intelligent execution and predictive work. Business leaders are right to take it one step at a time – but the rewards will be worth it in the long run .
