01→
Customer-facing agents
Help customers find information, answer questions and navigate defined next steps.
AI Agents
Build AI agents that can understand, decide and act.
AI agents can move beyond answering questions to performing defined tasks. DEEPS helps businesses identify where agents may create value and design them with the context, tools, boundaries and human oversight required to operate responsibly.
Business-first·Technology-neutral·Human oversight
What Is An AI Agent?
From answering a request to performing a task.
A traditional AI assistant may answer a question or generate content.
An AI agent can be designed to take a more active role in a workflow by interpreting information, determining a next step, using connected tools and performing defined actions.
That makes agents potentially useful when a business process involves multiple steps, changing information and controlled decisions.
01
Understand
Interpret information and context.
02
Decide
Determine the appropriate next step.
03
Act
Use tools to perform defined actions.
When Agents Make Sense
Use agents where the work benefits from intelligence and action.
An agent should have a clear role, useful access to information and tools, and boundaries around what it is allowed to do.
02→
Internal knowledge agents
Help employees find, interpret and work with information across business documents and knowledge sources.
03→
Task-oriented agents
Perform defined multi-step tasks by interpreting information, using tools and taking controlled actions.
04→
Workflow agents
Work within business processes where the next action depends on information, context or the result of an earlier step.
A Practical Agent Architecture
Context.
Reasoning.
Tools.
Action.
Oversight.
An effective agent needs more than a language model. It needs appropriate context, useful tools, defined actions and controls around what it is allowed to do.
01
Understand
Context
Provide the information and business context the agent needs.
01
Understand
Context
Provide the information and business context the agent needs.
02
Decide
Reasoning
Allow the system to interpret the situation and determine the appropriate next step.
02
Decide
Reasoning
Allow the system to interpret the situation and determine the appropriate next step.
03
Access
Tools
Give the agent controlled access to the systems and capabilities required.
03
Access
Tools
Give the agent controlled access to the systems and capabilities required.
04
Act
Action
Allow defined actions to be performed within agreed boundaries.
04
Act
Action
Allow defined actions to be performed within agreed boundaries.
05
Control
Oversight
Provide escalation, approval and human control where required.
05
Control
Oversight
Provide escalation, approval and human control where required.
Choosing The Right Approach
Not every problem needs an AI agent.
The more autonomy a system has, the more important it becomes to understand whether that autonomy is actually necessary.
01
Automation
Best suited to predictable processes where the rules and required actions are well defined.
Predictable
02
AI
Useful when information needs to be interpreted, generated, classified or summarised.
Interpretive
03Higher autonomy
AI agent
Useful when the system needs to interpret a situation, determine the next step, use tools and continue through multiple actions.
Multi-step
The goal is not maximum autonomy. The goal is the right level of autonomy for the business problem.
Agent Design
Design the capability around the business need.
01
Start with the task
Define what the agent needs to accomplish, who it helps and what a successful outcome looks like.
02
Give it the right context
Connect the agent to the information, knowledge and systems it actually needs.
03
Define what it can do
Make actions, permissions and boundaries explicit rather than leaving them ambiguous.
04
Design for exceptions
Determine what happens when the agent is uncertain, encounters an unusual case or reaches a decision that requires a person.
05
Measure performance
Evaluate whether the agent is producing useful business outcomes rather than simply generating plausible responses.
Potential Use Cases
Where could an agent actually help?
The strongest opportunities usually begin with a real workflow rather than the desire to have an AI agent.
Customer enquiry handling
01Internal knowledge support
02Lead qualification
03Document-driven workflows
04Research and information gathering
05Multi-step administrative tasks
06Operational support
07System-assisted workflows
08Human Oversight
More autonomy requires clearer boundaries.
Agents should operate within defined permissions and escalation paths. Important decisions should have appropriate human oversight.
01
Permissions
Define which systems and actions the agent can access.
02
Escalation
Define when uncertainty or exceptions should involve a person.
03
Evaluation
Measure whether the agent is performing its role reliably.
Who This Is For
Explore agents when your workflow needs more than simple automation.
01
We have processes that require several steps.
Explore whether an agent could coordinate information, decisions and actions across the workflow.
02
Our team spends time searching for information.
Consider an agent that can retrieve and work with relevant business knowledge.
03
Our automation still needs human interpretation.
Explore whether AI could handle parts of the process where information is less structured.
04
We're interested in agents but don't know where to start.
Start with the business problem and determine whether an agent is actually appropriate.
Explore The Opportunity
Find out whether an AI agent actually makes sense.
Start with the business problem, the workflow and the desired outcome. DEEPS can help determine whether an agent, automation or another approach is appropriate.
Free·30 minutes·No obligation