At a Glance

  • Accenture's Pulse of Change report released last week shows that agentic AI is exceeding expectations in boosting productivity and job satisfaction. The report surveyed 3,000 C-suite executives and 3,000 non-C-suite employees. More than two-thirds of C-suite respondents said agentic AI's impact on employee productivity exceeded expectations; about the same proportion of employees said their overall job satisfaction had improved.
  • Although most companies see some positive effects, the share reporting sustained business value from AI investments—that is, board-reportable impact—has declined. In the July survey, only 23% of companies said they saw reportable business value, down from 32% earlier this year.
  • This decline aligns with a trend executives observed for 2026: companies are trying to apply technology as broadly as possible across areas rather than taking a targeted approach. Muqsit Ashraf, Accenture's global lead for industry and corporate, told CIO Dive: "Companies have rolled out various tools and copilots, which has led to localized productivity gains but has not produced enterprise-level P&L impact."

Deep Dive

Nearly every company is using AI in some way, but only those that redesign workflows around AI will recoupthe millions of dollars spent on the technology。

A lot of AI spending is wasted—according to a recentHarness report, about one in every four dollars spent on AI is wasted as companies accelerate cost controls. Still, according to Accenture, 82% of C-suite leaders say they plan to increase investment.

Ashraf said that to maximize AI returns, companies should consider deep deployment rather than broad rollout. Instead of applying AI to every process in the organization, find a few scenarios where automating workflows with agentic systems can have the greatest impact.

"Rather than running hundreds of shallow pilots, push a few agentic use cases to reportable outcomes," Ashraf said.

Accenture found that technology is changing corporate roles. 78% of leaders expect employees' jobs to change within the next year, while 57% of employees say changes have already occurred. Nearly three-quarters of leaders say their organizations will create new entry-level AI-focused roles in the coming years.

To ensure employees have a strong AI culture at work, leaders should first lead by example, Ashraf said. In many workplaces, C-suite executives lag in AI adoption—only about a quarter of executives use the technology daily, Ashraf noted.

Finally, organizations need to realign the entire business, not just technology applications. This includes redefining roles, fixing data foundations, redefining governance, and establishing audit mechanisms to track reportable business value.

"So far, a lot of AI has been assistive—it helps people do existing jobs faster. It's been bolted onto existing processes, which is useful," Ashraf said. "But if you're just doing old things a bit faster and a bit better, you won't achieve business transformation."