How Australian CIOs can unlock the agentic AI advantage

With CIOs under pressure to deliver transformation at scale, agentic AI is emerging as a powerful lever to reduce complexity and free up capacity for higher-value work, but it also demands a fundamental shift in how organisations operate.

Agentic AI goes beyond traditional models that rely on fixed rules or algorithms by adapting to new situations, learning from experience and autonomously taking action to achieve goals without constant human oversight.

The shift is happening quickly. Gartner predicts that by 2028, one-third of enterprise software applications will incorporate agentic AI, with at least 15% of day-to-day work decisions made autonomously. IDC, meanwhile, forecasts that agentic AI will drive the next wave of IT investment, accounting for more than a quarter of global IT spending over the next five years.

“An important takeaway from this forecast is the clear alignment between the growth in AI spending and IT leaders’ trust that effective use of AI can boost future business success,” says Rick Villars, group vice president, Worldwide Research at IDC.

Yet in conversations with Australian CIOs, the challenge is not access to technology — it’s how to operationalise it.

From pilots to production: where organisations are unlocking value

At a recent CIO roundtable discussion in Sydney, held in partnership with Google Cloud, leaders pointed to some challenges in scaling AI but also where organisations are starting to make real progress.

Data readiness continues to be a key focus area, but it’s increasingly seen as an opportunity rather than a blocker. Many organisations are investing in improving data quality, accessibility and context — recognising that these foundations are what enable agentic AI to deliver reliable, scalable outcomes. As these capabilities mature, they are unlocking new use cases and accelerating the path to production.

At the same time, there is a growing shift in how leaders think about AI system design.

Success with agentic AI is no longer viewed as just a model challenge. Instead, CIOs are recognising the value of bringing together the three critical elements of reasoning, data context and execution as a single, integrated capability.

Historically, these components have often been developed in isolation. But organisations that are seeing the most traction are those taking a more holistic approach by orchestrating these elements so that insights are not only generated, but acted on in real time, within the flow of business operations.

What deployment looks like at scale

For CIOs, the clearest signal of the agentic era isn’t analyst forecasts; it’s where organisations are already committing.

Wesfarmers, for example, has entered a multi-year partnership with Google Cloud to deploy agentic AI across its retail portfolio, including Kmart, Officeworks and Priceline. Its OnePass platform is evolving into a unified, conversational interface that allows customers to search and transact seamlessly across brands. Internally, Gemini Enterprise has been rolled out to thousands of employees, automating work across marketing, finance and supply chain functions.

Across financial services, organisations are taking a similarly pragmatic approach by focusing on targeted use cases where agentic AI can improve customer experience and streamline operations, while maintaining strict controls around security and compliance.

For example, Macquarie Bank is improving customer experience and staff productivity with new agentic capabilities via its multi-year partnership with Google Cloud, equipping staff with advanced AI tools and a suite of specialised, pre-built agents through Geminin Enterprise.

The Australian bank rolled out a 24/7 AI agent “Q” to autonomously answer banking questions for its 2 million customers. “With this foundation Macquarie has already cut client losses by half. That’s secure, frictionless banking at scale,” said Karthik Nahrain, chief product and business officer, speaking at Google Cloud NEXT keynote.

These examples reinforce a key insight from CIO discussions: The organisations making progress are not trying to do everything at once. They are prioritising high-value use cases, building confidence and scaling deliberately.

Mindset shift required to thrive in agentic era

According to Google Cloud’s AI Agent Trends Report, leaders must question old assumptions and drive cultural change to thrive in the agentic AI era.

Oliver Parker, vice president, global GTM for generative AI at Google Cloud, says the shift to agentic AI isn’t just a technology change, it also requires a rethinking of mindset.

“AI agents are the leap from being an ‘add-on’ approach to being an ‘AI-first’ process. It’s a fundamental change in workflow, a new way to work that will require a profound shift in mindset and corporate culture.”

That’s echoed by IDC’s president Crawford Del Prete who says their forecast on agentic AI  raises several important issues for businesses to consider about the interconnection between the workforce and AI investment.

“As an example, business leaders will need to pay particular attention to employee roles in an enterprise and how roles change as agents become more commonplace in business. Agents will change the nature of work, making some roles highly productive and others obsolete. Workers and enterprises will need to be more agile than ever before to keep pace.”

Ultimately, the opportunity is clear, but so is the work required to realise it. For CIOs, the focus now is on making deliberate choices about where to scale, who to partner with, how to build trust and how to embed agentic AI into the fabric of everyday operations.

To find out more about how Google Cloud can help scale agentic AI across your business click here.