The race in the direction of cognitive automation is nicely underway. For years, deterministic automation has been the spine of reliability and compliance. Whereas this paradigm nonetheless issues, it not defines the frontier. The expansion of agentic AI has shifted the goalposts from process execution to contextual reasoning and adaptive decision-making.
Forrester’s ‘Predictions 2026: Automation and Robotics’ explores this transition and what it means for automation technique, platforms, and governance.
Lower than 15% of corporations will activate the agentic options in clever automation suites. Two distinct fashions of automation are rising. The primary anchors itself within the course of spine, the place narrowly scoped brokers function as embedded helpers, sitting inside present deterministic workflows. Forrester describes these workflows as ‘agentish’. The second mannequin elevates reasoning to the middle as brokers themselves use reasoning and planning to dynamically determine the best way to execute work. Because the automation panorama shifts from flow-first to reasoning-first architectures, course of automation distributors proceed to actively evolve their platforms by embedding agentish and agentic capabilities. Nonetheless, we count on the transition to be tough on conventional course of automation distributors who’re in the course of an enormous transformation of their core product stack at the same time as they orchestrate a reorientation of their legacy manufacturers and market positioning. We count on ROI and governance challenges to maintain most organizations working deterministic automation by 2026 regardless of vendor stress to undertake agentic options.
Strategic robotic innovation will unlock 20% of recent enterprise use instances. Whilst Agentic AI ushers in cognitive automation, speedy leaps in robotic studying are making robots extra versatile, less complicated to configure and built-in with digital workflows. These developments lead to a pointy enlargement of the “automatability floor,” or the scope and depth of labor that may be successfully automated inside the enterprise. But as these smarter robots be a part of software program brokers in shared environments, the system-level complexity of coordinating and governing this portfolio of automation rises quickly, driving convergence throughout beforehand distinct automation instruments and platforms. Forrester’s automation cloth analysis anticipated this shift: a unified structure that connects various automation modalities to orchestrate worth throughout end-to-end worth streams. The convergence of agentic AI and robotics into the standard automation portfolio now makes such an structure each pressing and achievable.
Course of intelligence will rescue 30% of failed AI initiatives. Course of intelligence sits at an inflection level on this evolution. Its potential to offer brokers with contextual consciousness and course of grounding is immense. But course of intelligence has largely sat out the primary wave of agentic automation. Most course of intelligence distributors have approached AI timidly, providing merely incremental enhancements like chat-based explainers or conversational analytics. Nonetheless, the actual alternative lies in turning course of insights into energetic inputs for agent reasoning, providing dwell context, compliance constraints, and operational suggestions loops. To remain related, we count on course of intelligence to evolve to embed itself immediately inside the cloth of company as an enabler of AI. Distributors that make this leap will place course of intelligence as a core enabler of autonomous, adaptive operations.
I invite you to examine all these and extra in our full ‘Predictions 2026: Automation and Robotics’ report that dives deeper into developments from agentic AI adoption to vendor consolidation and the rise of ‘workflow archaeology’.
Should you aren’t but a Forrester consumer, you may discover ways to put these predictions into motion throughout our dwell webinar. It’s also possible to obtain our complimentary Predictions information, which covers our prime know-how and safety predictions for 2026. Get further complimentary assets, together with webinars, on the Predictions 2026 hub.
