Real-world agentic AI use cases by industry

Discover how agentic automation is solving complex business challenges, from automating HR processes to streamlining healthcare and financial operations.

Cross-industry use cases

Summary

Agentic AI is moving beyond isolated tasks to automate entire end-to-end business processes.

  • Challenge and solution: Organizations face pressure to improve productivity with limited resources. Agentic automation addresses this by eliminating manual workflows and bridging data silos to accelerate operations.

  • Key capabilities: AI agents can be designed to execute complex workflows, make supervised decisions within set confidence thresholds and integrate with core business systems.

  • Strategic value: By deploying agentic solutions, businesses can lower operating costs by reducing repetitive data work, mitigate risk with improved governance and drive growth through faster, data-driven decision-making.

The power of agentic automation

Agentic automation represents a fundamental shift in how enterprises orchestrate work. By deploying multiple, specialized AI agents that collaborate to execute complex, end-to-end business workflows, organizations move far beyond the limitations of isolated task automation.

This approach empowers your business to:

  • Reason and decide: Unlike traditional RPA, which is confined to rigid, rule-based execution, agentic solutions can analyze context, make intelligent decisions within defined confidence thresholds and trigger follow-up actions autonomously.

  • Bridge fragmented ecosystems: Through Hyland’s Enterprise Agent Mesh, these agents operate across your existing systems and data silos, creating a unified, intelligent process flow that eliminates manual handoffs.

  • Scale without overhead: By automating complex decision-making, you can expand capacity and enter new markets without increasing headcount, directly fueling revenue growth.

The momentum behind this technology is clear. Gartner reports a 1,445% surge in client inquiries about multiagent systems, signaling that forward-looking organizations are prioritizing adaptive process orchestration to maintain a competitive advantage.

> Read more | AI Agents, AI Assistants and Agentic AI

Cross-industry agentic AI use cases

Agentic AI isn't a theoretical concept. It's delivering tangible results across every major industry by targeting common, high-volume processes that have historically drained resources.

Employee file management

AI agents securely store, organize and manage employee documents. This streamlines onboarding, enables employee self-service and provides seamless access to personnel files directly within HR systems like Workday and SuccessFactors.

AP automation

AI-native intelligent document processing (IDP) improves invoice data extraction, matching and validation to accelerate payment cycles. You can deploy AI agents to perform fraud detection and manage financial reconciliations, automatically flagging any exceptions for human review. For example, Valeris realized 40% time savings on 2,000-3,000 documents per day with Hyland IDP.

Sales order processing

Achieve faster and higher-quality order validation by using AI agents to check data completeness and accuracy against existing records. The system then automates the routing of validated orders for seamless ERP integration, which reduces manual handoffs and improves order fulfillment times.

> Read more | Accounts payable automation success stories

2025 Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for Artificial Intelligence

Explore the future of AI and transform your enterprise with this must-read analysis on AI’s reality and potential

As AI evolves, enterprises are shifting their focus from generative AI hype to foundational innovations that drive scalable, impactful change. In this comprehensive report from Gartner, leaders get a roadmap for how to prioritize emerging AI technologies, so they can stay ahead with the right tools.

Explore key insights into the AI adoption journey, including the transition from experimental phases to scaling operations. Uncover how AI-ready data, AI governance and responsible AI implementations are becoming essential differentiators for businesses.

Human resources

Agentic automation in human resources

HR departments are buried in administrative work. Agentic automation frees them to focus on strategic initiatives by taking over repetitive, document-intensive tasks.

Intelligent classification and indexing

Automate the classification and indexing of incoming HR documents, such as resumes, I-9 forms and benefits paperwork. Using AI-native document processing ensures information is routed and stored correctly without manual intervention.

Payroll automation

Use agentic automation to validate timesheets, calculate pay based on complex rule sets and process payroll. This reduces manual errors and ensures timely, accurate compensation for all employees.

Benefits administration

Deploy AI agents as assistants to help employees with benefits enrollment, answer common policy questions and process life event changes. This frees up HR staff for more strategic work.

> Read more | How AI is changing HR for the better

Finance and banking

Agentic automation in finance and banking

In finance, speed, accuracy and compliance are non-negotiable. Agentic automation delivers on all three fronts.

New account opening and customer onboarding

Streamline customer onboarding by using AI agents to intake, extract and classify data from new account applications. The system automatically routes any exceptions for human review, keeping the process moving.

Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance assessment

Automate identity verification and compliance checks. AI agents validate customer documents against internal and external data sources, creating a complete and auditable trail for regulatory purposes.

Continuous risk audits

Implement AI agents to continuously monitor transactions and customer data for signs of financial risk or noncompliance. This provides real-time alerts so you can act immediately.

> Read more | The power of intelligent automation in banking

Forrester study: Unlocking the full potential of AI agents

Enterprise-wide AI agent adoption is accelerating

In this Hyland-commissioned study by Forrester Consulting, Forrester found that more than 45% of organizations already use AI agents and another 25% are piloting them. Although adoption is accelerating, most organizations struggle to scale beyond early use cases due to a lack of enterprise context.

Forrester provides key recommendations for how to get AI agents right, as well as detailed data on enterprise trends around agent use. Download this report to learn more about how organizations are looking to AI agents to optimize workflows, make smarter decisions and create more personalized experiences.

Healthcare

Agentic automation in healthcare

Healthcare organizations are under immense pressure to improve patient outcomes while controlling costs. Agentic AI automates critical administrative processes, giving clinicians more time for patient care.

Intelligent MedRecords (IMR)

Leverage generative AI to automatically capture, classify and extract data from medical records. This helps lower handling costs and eliminates processing bottlenecks. With this approach, Asante reduced its paper document processing time by 90%.

> Read more | Intelligent MedRecords: Improve the speed and accuracy of HIM tasks

Intelligent correspondence for revenue cycle

Apply generative AI to automate the processing of inbound documents like explanation of benefits (EOBs) and patient letters. This helps eliminate revenue cycle slowdowns and reduces administrative costs.

Prior authorization and referrals intake

Streamline the intake of prior authorizations and patient referrals. Using generative AI to capture and extract key data reduces manual work for staff and accelerates the delivery of patient care.

> Read more | The revolution of AI in healthcare

Insurance

Agentic automation in insurance

The insurance industry is built on documents. Agentic automation helps carriers process claims faster, evaluate risk more accurately and serve policyholders better.

Intelligent claims capture and management

Use AI-powered intelligent classification, page separation and indexing for incoming insurance claims to accelerate processing from the first notice of loss. You can seamlessly integrate with platforms like Guidewire ClaimCenter to provide adjusters with complete, contextual access to all claim documents.

Medical bill evaluation

Deploy an AI agent to ingest medical bills, apply policy rules and fee schedules and recommend actions. The agent can suggest paying, reducing or denying a claim line item based on its analysis.

Claims assistance

Leverage Knowledge Discovery to find insights within unstructured content in claim files. This allows staff to ask questions in natural language and receive summarized, referenced answers instantly.

> Read more | Intelligent automation trends in insurance

Government

Agentic automation in government

Government agencies can use agentic automation to improve citizen services, ensure compliance and operate more efficiently.

Automated service requests and case management

Automate the intake, routing and processing of citizen service requests and case management documents. This improves response times and the overall quality of service.

Application and eligibility determination

Use AI agents to review grant, permit and program applications. The agents cross-reference information against established rules to make initial eligibility determinations, speeding up the entire process.

Constituent privacy protection

Utilize agentic automation to identify and redact sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) from public records before release. This helps ensure compliance with privacy regulations without tedious manual review.

> Read more | 5 reasons government agencies turn to IDP

Education

Agentic automation in education

From admissions to alumni relations, educational institutions are finding new ways to apply agentic AI to improve operations and student outcomes.

Automated admissions and financial aid

Automate key processes in admissions and financial aid to handle high volumes of applications and inquiries. The Virginia Community College System automated the processing of over 125,000 transcripts per year, demonstrating the scalability of this approach. Read how they achieved that here.

Transcript insight advisor

Use AI agents to analyze student transcripts, identify transfer credit equivalencies based on institutional rules and advise on course selection. This helps support academic progress and keeps students on track.

Alumni research and development

Deploy agents built with Agent Builder and powered by Knowledge Enrichment to research alumni for development and fundraising opportunities. These agents can identify potential donors based on specified criteria, focusing fundraising efforts where they will be most effective.

> Read more | AI use cases in higher education

A man is smiling at his phone

Harvard Business Review Analytic Services pulse survey insights: Going beyond traditional AI and toward agentic AI

Many organizations find themselves unprepared to harness the full potential of AI. This pulse survey from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services reveals that while 94% of leaders recognize the importance of well-connected data for AI success, only 27% have achieved it. 

In “Bridging the Readiness Gap to the Agentic Enterprise,” learn about strategies for fully connecting your content and how leading enterprises are thinking about transforming unstructured content into connected pipelines. 

Considerations

Powering the agentic enterprise with Hyland

How do you build and manage these powerful solutions? It requires a platform designed for enterprise-grade AI.

Hyland's Enterprise Agent Mesh

The Enterprise Agent Mesh is a network of coordinated, use case-specific AI agents that execute complex processes. It's powered by Hyland’s Enterprise Context Engine, which unifies content, processes and applications into a real-time, contextual view of your operations.

Core products for agentic automation

  • Hyland Agent Builder: An AI-native, intuitive, point-and-click interface to create, configure and manage AI agents that can make autonomous decisions with human-in-the-loop supervision.

  • Hyland IDP: An AI-native solution for document capture, classification and data extraction, featuring LLM-based capabilities that eliminate the need for extensive machine learning training.

  • Hyland Automate: An AI-enabled platform for orchestrating AI agents, RPA bots and other automation technologies using a prompt-based design studio and prebuilt connectors.

  • Hyland Knowledge Discovery and Hyland Knowledge Enrichment: AI-native tools that transform unstructured data into structured, AI-ready information and allow users to find insights using natural language queries.

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Begin your agentic AI journey

Hyland Content Innovation Cloud™ provides the foundation for building an agentic enterprise. The platform starts by making your enterprise content AI-ready, so you can ensure that the insights driving automation are relevant, trustworthy and secure. Content Innovation Cloud enables organizations to move from just experimenting with AI to operationalizing it at scale.

Breakthrough capabilities like the Enterprise Agent Mesh and Enterprise Context Engine help you automate complex workflows. You can empower employees and create new ways to serve your customers. The question is no longer if you should automate. It's how fast.

Hyland Content Innovation Cloud™

The platform to power content innovation

Content Innovation Cloud is the future of enterprise content management. By leveraging a unified content, process and application intelligence platform, your organization can unlock profound insights from enterprise content and unstructured data — fueling innovation without disruption.