For many businesses, the first experience of AI was a chatbot: ask a question, receive an answer. The next stage is much more significant. AI is increasingly becoming a way of accessing systems, working with data and actually getting things done.
A major development is the rise of AI agents. Rather than simply responding to prompts, an agent can be given a goal, gather information from different systems, make decisions within defined rules and carry out actions. Gartner's recent analysis suggests the greatest business value is likely to come from specialised agents designed around particular business processes rather than one general-purpose AI trying to do everything.
That could mean an agent checking customer information, reviewing contracts, preparing a report, updating a CRM system and creating follow-up tasks; all as part of a single workflow.
Perhaps even more interesting is what this means for the way people access business data.
Traditionally, information is locked behind the interface of whichever system stores it. SharePoint has one interface, an ERP system another, SQL databases another, and bespoke applications another again. Staff often need to understand where information lives before they can even begin looking for it.
AI can increasingly sit above those systems as an intelligent interface.
Imagine a simple company portal where someone can type:
"Show me all customers whose contracts expire in the next six months, their current monthly spend, any outstanding support issues and when we last met with them."
The information might come from four completely different systems, but the user doesn't necessarily need to know that. Technologies such as APIs and the emerging Model Context Protocol (MCP) are making it increasingly practical to give AI controlled access to multiple business systems while retaining permissions, governance and audit trails.
This also means businesses don't always need to replace existing systems to modernise how people interact with them. A clean, purpose-built web interface can be created over existing databases, SharePoint, Microsoft 365, cloud platforms, line-of-business applications and APIs, with AI providing natural-language search and automation behind the scenes.
This is an area where technology partners such as iO can increasingly help businesses: connecting the systems they already have, creating straightforward interfaces for staff and introducing agents and automation where they genuinely remove repetitive work.
The important change is that AI is no longer simply something businesses can talk to. Increasingly, it is becoming the interface and automation layer connecting people, data and systems.