Camunda report says 75% of organisation admit gap between agentic AI vision and reality

Camunda has released its 2026 State of Agentic Orchestration and Automation report. The report says 73% of organisations admit there is a gap between their agentic AI vision and the current reality. It finds that despite 71% of organisations stating they use AI agents, only 11% of agentic AI use cases have reached production in the last year. Furthermore, 50% believe untamed agentic AI risks “fanning the flames” of poorly implemented processes and automations.

The report highlights that many organisations are experimenting with AI agents or plan to. However, trust remains a major barrier to wider adoption.

• 84% are worried about business risk of AI in day-to-day processes when IT does not have appropriate controls in place.
• 80% are concerned about a lack of transparency into how AI is used.
• 66% cite compliance concerns around the use of AI agents.

As a result, agentic AI adoption patterns are uneven. 80% say most of their AI agents are chatbots or assistants summarising or answer questions, instead of handling mission-critical cases. A further 48% say their AI agents operate in silos and are not woven into end-to-end business processes.

“The promise of agentic AI is undeniable. However trust remains the key barrier to adoption,” said Kurt Petersen, senior vice president, customer success at Camunda. “Right now, exercising caution with agentic AI means many organisations can’t move beyond pilots or isolated use cases. Without clear guardrails and visibility, agents will stay at the edge of the business. Once a foundation of trust is in place, agents can become powerful multipliers inside governed processes instead of siloed copilots or chatbots.”

Automation impact is clear, but complexity is outpacing control

The report suggests automation is already delivering tangible results for many organisations. Furthermore, it is now a key driver of value across core business processes: the ones that build and sell an organisation’s products and services. Organisational leaders report increased business growth, higher efficiency, and better customer experiences as a result of process automation. In addition to intentions to invest further. These results highlight a significant runway for further process automation, and the investment outlook reflects this ambition. The report suggests the next step is extending this success to enterprise-agentic automation. A technical infrastructure where AI agents participate in the same core processes with the same level of control and reliability as other tools and technologies.

The report highlights that 95% of organisations have seen increased business growth due to process automation over the past year. (This is up from 87% last year). On average, organisations have automated 48% of their processes and believe this could reach 64%. 79% plan to increase automation spend, with budgets expected to rise by an average of 20% over the next two years.

At the same time, technology stacks are becoming more distributed, and the number of endpoints involved in each process is growing. In fact, 76% of organisations say the volume and diversity of endpoints is increasing exponentially. As a result, 85% say they need better tools to manage the intersections between processes. This highlights the challenge organisations face in realising full value from their AI and automation investments.

Agentic orchestration is the new operating model

Agentic orchestration blends the deterministic and dynamic orchestration of business processes, leveraging agents to add dynamic reasoning to processes so they can adapt in real time.

The report highlights:

• 88% say AI needs orchestrating across business processes if organisations are to get maximum benefit from their AI investments.
• 90% say AI needs to be orchestrated like any other endpoint within automated business processes to ensure regulatory compliance.
• 85% say they have not yet reached the right level of process maturity to implement agentic orchestration.

“Agentic orchestration, not standalone agents, is the key to closing the AI vision-reality gap,” added Petersen. “Deterministic orchestration has always established structured guardrails. By blending it with dynamic orchestration patterns to leverage reasoning across AI agents, people, and systems in end-to-end processes, enterprises can build a foundation for AI agents they truly trust. This is enterprise agentic automation in practice. This is how organisations will turn today’s AI experiments into durable, business-critical capabilities.”

Report methodology

Camunda commissioned Coleman Parkes to conduct research among 1,150 senior IT decision-makers, business decision-makers, and enterprise software architects responsible for process automation in large organisations with more than 1,000 employees. Respondents were split geographically (505 US, 216 UK, 216 France and 215 Germany) as well as from multiple industries. The survey was conducted online between September 23 and October 23, 2025.

Enterprise Times: What does this mean for businesses

Agentic orchestration and automation are still in their infancy. The technology continues to evolve and change as it impacts all aspects of business processes. Camunda’s report suggests that while the majority of organisations are exploring or implementing agentic AI. There remains a significant gap between their ambitions and the reality of effective, large-scale adoption. Trust, risk management, compliance, and lack of transparency are major obstacles, causing most AI agents to remain confined to limited roles such as chatbots or assistants rather than being integrated into mission-critical business processes.

The report suggests that to close this gap, organisations must focus on orchestrating AI agents within broader, governed business processes. This is what Camunda calls “agentic orchestration”. This approach blends structured, rule-based process management with dynamic capabilities of AI agents, laying the groundwork for trusted, scalable automation. Until organisations mature their processes and establish robust controls and transparency, agentic AI will remain underutilised and siloed. The findings highlight that only with these foundations in place can agentic AI fulfil its promise as a transformative force within enterprises.

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