As AI reshapes industries worldwide, enterprise teams investing in AI agents today are securing more than immediate gains—they’re setting themselves up for a lasting competitive edge. The ROI of AI projects goes beyond financial returns; it’s about harnessing the potential of AI to drive operational efficiency, streamline governance, enhance customer and employee satisfaction, and build a foundation for a long-term strategic advantage. In this post, I propose a framework to help organizations understand and measure the impact of agentic AI.

The 5 Dimension ROI Framework for Agentic AI

In my time working with enterprise leaders from various industries, I’ve observed a key change in how the most innovative teams measure ROI on AI initiatives. Dollar savings alone don’t cut it - and unfortunately, many of the solutions claiming to save time have ended up costing more time and money than they save. So what’s different?

The foundational technology powering AI agents is unlocking new efficiencies, enabling teams to automate workflows with flexibility and resilience. Large Action Models and generative AI have opened the door to AI copilots that can actually perform tasks and reason as a human employee would. This has brought to light a new paradigm for measuring ROI because the technology cuts deeper and further horizontally than prior innovations.

While the five dimensions we'll cover are not new, agentic AI enables unprecedented breakthroughs in these areas. With AI taking over time-consuming, manual tasks, teams can apply their skills and creativity toward initiatives that drive the company forward, build stronger customer relationships, and foster a more innovative and resilient organization.

1. Operational Impact: Better Decision-making, Increased Efficiency, and Improved Quality

A common refrain of customers is that, despite their teams spending countless hours crunching data, they still struggle to make fully informed and timely decisions. Leaders feel like they’re drowning in data but starving for actionable insights. This is where agentic AI steps in—not only automating data collection and analysis but making every process that feeds those data streams more efficient, empowering leaders to make better decisions faster.

Take, for example, the finance department of one of our F500 customers. The team is stretched thin across critical processes like accounts payable and receivable, expense auditing, and month-end close. Team members are constantly backlogged with repetitive tasks like sifting through invoices and contracts, reconciling expenses, and double-checking entries to ensure accuracy.

With agentic AI, the team is now processing data instantly and flagging key trends or irregularities; instead of drowning in manual work, the finance team can focus on high-impact analysis, empowering leaders with the real-time information they need to drive the business forward with confidence.

AI agents can accelerate key processes and empower employees to focus on high-value work across every industry. Imagine reducing the time for your organization’s cash collection, support, employee onboarding, claims processing, etc. —time savings that translate into faster delivery, happier customers, and a more agile organization.

Plus, AI doesn’t tire or make mistakes after mastering a task. This consistency results in fewer errors, improved output, and quality that elevates organizational standards.

2. Governance Impact: Stronger Oversight, Lower Risk

AI agents provide full visibility into every automated process, creating a rich repository of metadata that organizations can analyze for continuous improvement. By pairing AI with human oversight, organizations can better ensure policy adherence and mitigate risk, minimizing the variability often associated with manual processes and potentially avoiding fines associated with errors.

A common example we see at Orby is in expense auditing. This seemingly simple process can quickly become convoluted when not simply checking that a receipt matches and is correctly categorized but manually checking allowed limits, comparing expenses to regional policies, confirming department budgets, converting currencies, generating audit trails, and so on. One customer we work with was only able to audit about 10% of submitted expense reports due to the extremely high volume of submissions. This left them open to compliance risk, fraud, and loss. Using an AI agent to automate their expense audit workflows, the team can now review 100% of expenses and has already saved $2M through the automated detection of errors, duplicates, and non-compliant expenses.

3. Customer Impact: Faster Service, Happier Clients

Any team that interacts with customers wants to ensure a great customer experience. However,  tedious, time-consuming processes can result in customer friction outside of the team’s control.

With faster cycle times and real-time data, AI agents can streamline customer interactions, like reducing time-to-quote for new or returning clients or reducing AHT on service tickets. Even a 20% reduction in time spent between each step – as we’ve observed across our customers in tech, insurance, and client services – results in a noticeably smoother experience that clients appreciate.

AI agents can work 24x7 and can easily scale up and down across processes. Consistent, dependable support fosters customer trust, leading to improved Net Promoter Scores (NPS) and strengthening customer loyalty.

And achieving ROI with AI agents doesn’t have to mean they are directly interacting with your clients, either. In a recent discussion with Vishal Gupta, SVP, Chief Information and Technology Officer for Lexmark International, he shared several examples of earning customer loyalty and satisfaction through intelligent applications of AI agents like ensuring all customers are greeted upon arrival, displaying wait times, monitoring machine performance, and triggering smart alerts for teams to stay on track.

4. Employee Impact: More Engagement, More Growth

Agentic AI eliminates soul-crushing tedious tasks, freeing employees to engage in meaningful work and creating a workplace that fosters engagement and job satisfaction. AI-powered productivity gains give employees the breathing room to learn new skills, encouraging personal growth while aligning with organizational goals. This can usually be measured by employee survey results. In fact, a global study by HP found that employees who used AI were 11 points happier in their relationship to work than those who didn't.

5. Financial Impact: Direct Savings, New Revenue Streams

Automating labor-intensive processes results in substantial labor cost savings. However, many companies overlook the additional overhead costs saved—agentic AI can reveal these hidden savings, magnifying financial benefits. Beyond cost savings, AI agents offer revenue-generating opportunities. For example, they can help prevent revenue leakage by automating audits for unclaimed tax credits or by capturing early payment discounts, which directly impact the bottom line.

Defining a Long-Term ROI Horizon: Short, Medium, and Long-Term Gains

The ROI journey with agentic AI evolves over time. To capture its full impact, organizations can measure ROI across short, medium, and long-term horizons.

• Short-Term (0-6 months): Start with quick wins in operational and financial impact. Labor cost savings, faster cycle times, and initial improvements in customer satisfaction provide immediate returns, sparking early enthusiasm and buy-in.
• Medium-Term (6-20 months): AI agent deployment expands across processes, unlocking insights and enhancing governance. During this phase, data-driven improvements in customer satisfaction and employee engagement further demonstrate AI’s impact.
• Long-Term (20+ months): As AI deployments mature, they drive sustained innovation and optimization, laying the groundwork for potential new business models. This phase underscores the transformational power of AI agents and their role as a strategic cornerstone.

Beyond Quantifiable ROI: Why the Future Demands AI Investment

While the above framework captures measurable ROI, the strategic advantage lies in the intangible, long-term benefits of AI agents. Investing in AI today positions organizations as leaders in an AI-driven future, where the risks of inaction are higher than ever. AI’s influence is pervasive, and companies that fail to adopt it risk being left behind as competitors leverage first-mover advantage, real-world learning, and evolving AI capabilities. Early adoption signals industry leadership, inviting collaboration and opportunities to set standards that shape the future.

As AI evolves rapidly, organizations that invest now will be best positioned to harness emerging advancements, building cumulative insights and gaining an enduring competitive edge rapidly. In our experience working with large enterprise customers, we know that AI readiness varies widely and is often shaped by visionary leadership. The learning curve is steep, and it takes foresight to effectively guide the organization through this technology revolution.

The existential question is clear: how can companies afford not to invest in AI? The future is AI-driven, and waiting risks obsolescence.

—

Bella Liu

CEO & Co-Founder, Orby AI

Bella Liu is the co-founder and CEO of Orby AI, an AI Agent platform that automates critical tasks to help enterprise teams reclaim time and focus on higher-value work. Drawing on her extensive experience leading AI product development at UiPath, Bella founded Orby to simplify and scale automation for modern businesses. Built from the ground up with generative AI at its core, Orby is the only AI Agent platform powered by a Large Action Model (LAM), delivering unmatched efficiency. Her vision is to redefine the future of work by freeing time and unlocking human potential through smarter automation.

‍