Agentic automation, software that reasons and adapts to complete tasks, is showing up on AI center of excellence (AI CoE) roadmaps. But the standard way companies justify automation investments, hours saved times labor cost minus build cost, was designed for rule-based tools like robotic process automation (RPA). That model misses most of the value agents create.
In this post, we introduce a framework AI CoE leaders can use to build a business case that captures the full value of agentic automation. You will learn why the RPA-era ROI model falls short, how to measure the value it misses, and which workflows are worth automating with agents.
Why the traditional business case falls short
The classic return on investment (ROI) model was built for stable, high-volume, rule-based work: count the transactions, measure the minutes, multiply by a loaded rate, subtract the build cost. RPA earned its place on those terms.
The model assumes the world it was…
