There is no doubt about what took centre stage in the theatre of business applications in 2025: agentic artificial intelligence (AI). The technology, which sees AI systems working autonomously with little or no human input, has encompassed and surpassed previous generations of artificial intelligence—classical AI, machine learning-based AI, and, from late 2022 onwards, generative AI (GenAI). This transformation began at the start of 2025.
This selection of 10 business applications stories from Computer Weekly in 2025 registers this ineluctable trend. They range from how AI can be put to real business use—for example, in managing global supply chains—to how it can, counter-intuitively, play a part in empowering workers. We look at how it is playing out in the media sector and how it is enabling CIOs to become more business-strategic than ever, raising them to the level of the CEO, largely for the first time ever.
The suppliers are, however, still calling the agentic AI shots, and our coverage reflects what C-level executives at Oracle, SAP, and Salesforce are saying about the phenomenon. Perhaps now that agentic AI seems to be elevating CIOs at user organisations, we shall hear more of their insight based on real-world implementation experience across the full gamut of AI: classical, generative, and agentic.
In the meantime, this list includes an interview with Monty Barlow, Capgemini’s Cambridge Consultants’ thoughtful CEO, providing a UK-based perspective on the future of technology from Silicon Fen.
Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 business applications articles of 2025.
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### 1. Is Agentic AI the Beginning of the End for ERP?
The rise of agentic AI promises much for enterprise resource planning (ERP), possibly even its supersession. But ERP isn’t dead — it’s just evolving as it seeks to govern AI.
Predictions of ERP’s demise are not new. Client-server architectures were supposed to kill the mainframe; cloud computing was meant to kill on-premise ERP; and best-of-breed applications were forecast to dismantle the suite. None of that happened. Instead, incumbents adapted and survived.
Now comes agentic AI, the latest technology to rattle the ERP cage. For some, it’s a natural progression: a chance to add real automation to manage clunky and cumbersome tasks. For others, it’s an opportunity to break the mould and rewrite enterprise software history.
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### 2. How AI Can Help to Optimise Supply Chains Under Pressure
In a bravura piece, we examined how companies are responding with AI, nearshoring, and planning as globalisation takes a new, nationalistic, Trumpian twist.
Globalisation has boosted trade for decades, but crises, tariffs, and climate change have made supply chains more fragile. The 2008 global financial crisis saw the collapse of banks including Lehman Brothers, causing merchandise trade to fall sharply in 2009. Since then, trade has zigzagged sideways, staying below 50% of global GDP.
International trade in goods has faced multiple disruptions: the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano in 2010, the UK’s vote to leave the European Union in 2016, the Covid-19 pandemic starting in 2020, the Suez Canal blockage in 2021, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. US President Donald Trump’s rapidly changing tariffs have been just the latest problem.
Globalisation has “probably gone a step too far,” said Emile Naus, a UK-based partner of Amsterdam-headquartered consultancy BearingPoint and formerly head of logistics strategy for retailer Marks and Spencer. Companies have been relying on suppliers on the other side of the world to deliver goods on time with little margin for error.
Richard Howells, vice-president for solution management at German ERP software provider SAP, said software suppliers have supported supply chain acceleration over several years by improving integration between software applications, moving to cloud computing, and increasing the use of AI.
Referring to a podcast he hosts on the future of supply chains, Howells said: “We don’t get through an episode without mentioning AI. I should ring a bell every time someone mentions it. It is a game-changer for supply chains and for businesses in general.”
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### 3. Sapphire 2025: BASF Evolves Business with Move to SAP S/4Hana
Germany-based global chemical giant BASF has elected to move its SAP IT estate to an S/4Hana private cloud to evolve its business in uncertain times.
The chemical industry leader is adopting SAP’s S/4Hana ERP system as part of a business modernisation strategy, announced at the SAP Sapphire user and partner conference in Madrid.
Petra Scheithe, senior vice-president of digitalisation of services and ERP platforms at BASF Business Services, outlined the latest development in the company’s long-standing relationship with SAP in an interview with Computer Weekly.
BASF, which employs around 112,000 people, has been an SAP customer for 40 years. Its headquarters in Ludwigshafen are a half-hour drive from SAP’s in Walldorf.
According to a joint SAP/BASF statement, the chemical firm “adopted a hybrid system landscape to integrate SAP S/4Hana Cloud into BASF’s vast system and reduce the complexity of on-premise management. With a clean core strategy in place, any new customisations and functional extensions will be cloud-ready, allowing simplified system maintenance and operations in the long run.”
BASF also intends to use SAP’s AI and sustainability software.
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### 4. Salesforce Execs at TDX 25: Agentforce a Whole System AI Play
Salesforce executives presented their Agentforce agentic AI technology as a “whole system” approach—not just focused on large language models (LLMs)—at its developer conference, TDX, in March.
They described it as a “holy trinity” of data, apps, and agents. Relatedly, they consistently disparaged “DIY” AI programmes.
Paula Goldman, Salesforce’s chief ethical and humane use officer, said: “I think a lot of the public discourse about AI has been about [large language] models. But if you think about Agentforce, it’s a whole system. There’s a foundation model, and then there’s a series of smaller models that go into our Atlas system, and there are workflows that are automated that people can draw on. We’ve got used to talking about AI as models over the past few years, but I think we need to be talking about systems.”
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### 5. Oracle Plants Agentic AI Flag in Business Process Automation
Oracle promoted its agentic AI studio, unveiled at OracleCloud World Tour London in March, as an avowed business process automation accelerant.
The supplier introduced its AI Agent Studio for Fusion Applications as a platform for orchestrating AI agents and teams of agents.
Steve Miranda, executive vice-president of Oracle Applications Development, said AI Agent Studio is part of an ongoing, quarter-by-quarter unfolding of Oracle’s approach to artificial intelligence for business process improvement.
Other suppliers have their narratives based on their own capacities. Salesforce is wagering on Agentforce, combining data, applications, and virtual agents, with a sales automation and customer experience orientation that minimises “do it yourself” AI.
Oracle’s story is that its cloud Fusion Applications cover all business applications—from ERP through supply chain management and human capital management to customer experience. Oracle said its AI use cases and agents can now be orchestrated across all these business disciplines, resting on Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure.
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### 6. ServiceNow K25: McDermott Vaunts Agentic AI Platform as Revolutionary
At its Knowledge 25 customer and partner conference in May, ServiceNow painted an orchestrated agentic AI future for its Now platform, targeting customer relationship management (CRM) as a prime field for growth.
ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott hailed AI as an “absolute requirement” for the survival of humanity during the conference in Las Vegas.
“AI is civilisation’s opportunity of this century. It is a gateway to prosperity. It is the only $22tn global market opportunity between now and 2030. It’s the only opportunity to take out $4tn in operating expenses. This is not an incremental change. This intelligence super-cycle is an exponential transformation, and it is bigger than the internet,” he said.
ServiceNow is placing the same emphasis on agentic AI as other big enterprise software firms such as Oracle and Salesforce. The company announced increased embedding of agentic AI in its service platform, originally developed for IT service management, with its Now platform.
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### 7. Salesforce: CIOs Closer to the Bridge Than Ever Due to Agentic AI
By October/November, Salesforce research into how CIOs are using agentic AI found the technology to be making their roles more strategic than ever within their businesses.
The CRM supplier conducted an online survey with market research firm NewtonX among 200 CIOs from 24 countries in October 2025. This was the second year of the survey.
It found that AI implementation increased by 282% since 2024—from 11% to 42%—and the AI budget nearly doubled. The CIOs surveyed said they were dedicating 30% of their AI budget specifically to agentic AI, so most of it is still going to other forms of AI such as GenAI and traditional machine learning AI.
Nevertheless, 96% of CIOs said their company either currently uses or plans to use agentic AI in the next two years.
This increased use of AI seems to have boosted the self-esteem of CIOs. Three-quarters said they felt more confident in their role now than a year ago, and 97% said they knew more about AI than they did a year prior.
According to the researchers, as a direct consequence of agentic AI, CIOs reported working most closely with CEOs over other C-suite executives as their roles increased in scope and importance.
This has caused 94% of CIOs to expand their skill sets, and 57% have deliberately honed their narrative-building and storytelling skills to prepare for agentic AI.
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### 8. How Generative AI Is Playing Out in the Media Industry
Generative AI (GenAI) is proving to be a double-edged sword in society at large, especially in the creative industries.
Many writers, illustrators, and musicians see GenAI as a threat—something that exploits their creative work to produce algorithmic knock-offs, undermining their ability to make a living.
Industry bodies, companies, and trade unions are campaigning against UK government plans to let AI firms use creative content without fair compensation.
(Article section incomplete; further details on media industry impact not included.)
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### 10. Interview: Cambridge Consultants CEO Monty Barlow Scans for Tech Surprises
Cambridge Consultants is a technology and consulting business unit of Capgemini. Its chief executive, Monty Barlow, talked to Computer Weekly about the firm’s heritage and vision for the future of digital technology.
As university towns, Cambridge and Oxford are oddly disconnected from the UK’s capital compared to those in other European countries. France’s leading universities are mostly in Paris, by contrast.
This matters because the UK’s so-called “golden triangle” of London, Oxford, and Cambridge is arguably less economically beneficial to the nation than it could be. Think of the synergies lost.
One way an Oxford academic put this to me recently was that the “triangle lacks a hypotenuse.” Less mathematically, this meant that, as an Oxford resident, the Computer Weekly enterprise applications editor visiting Capgemini’s Cambridge Consultants on the Cambridge Science Park on a hot June day was unable to take an air-conditioned train directly from Oxford to Cambridge.
When he arrived, the CEO recounted how, in 1960, the firm’s founders had the simple idea of putting academic thinking at the disposal of industry—a concept that now sounds obvious.
“Now, MIT will have big accelerators. Universities are in on the act [so] it doesn’t seem so weird to bridge academia and industry. But at the time, it was,” said Barlow.
How does his firm decide which specific areas of technology to focus on?
“There’s a whole mix of things,” he said. “There are the insights coming from particular markets we work in, where people are starting to ask about emergent things. There’s the passion of the individuals who work here. And then there is bringing that all together.”
Their people could see some technology waves before they were in the mainstream, he added. “We started going big on the proper deep learning AI revolution in the 2010s. I could see it coming a mile off, but the world took a while to notice.”
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*This collection highlights the transformative impact of agentic AI on businesses in 2025 and captures perspectives from key industry leaders and organisations shaping the future of enterprise technology.*
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366636343/Top-10-business-applications-stories-of-2025