The next wave of enterprise efficiency may not come from building more AI agents. It may come from rethinking which business processes companies need to own in the first place.
Agentic AI promises to transform enterprise operations through automation, faster execution, and reduced manual effort. Yet, the rush to agentify every process overlooks a fundamental question:
Does the enterprise need to build and operate this capability itself, or should it simply buy the outcome?
Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) offers a compelling alternative. Rather than investing in AI infrastructure, integration, talent, governance, and continuous maintenance, companies can outsource entire processes to specialised providers.
The distinction is simple: Agentification changes how work gets done. BPaaS changes who is responsible for getting it done.
The economic case: Why BPaaS could outperform internal agentification
Building AI agents internally may reduce execution costs, but the enterprise continues to own the underlying complexity.
BPaaS offers three potential economic advantages:
- Economies of scale: Providers spread technology, automation, and infrastructure investments across multiple clients.
- Specialised execution: Standardised workflows and domain expertise can deliver process efficiencies that individual enterprises may struggle to replicate.
- Flexible cost structures: Transaction-based pricing can convert portions of fixed operating costs into variable expenses aligned with business volumes.
Consider trade promotion claims management in a consumer goods company. Instead of building agents for claim validation, deduction reconciliation, and exception handling, the company could outsource the process to an AI-enabled BPaaS provider.
The enterprise retains commercial decision-making while paying for process execution against agreed performance metrics.
The result? Potentially lower operating costs, reduced technology investment, and greater management focus on revenue-generating activities.
However, to the contrary, BPaaS is not inherently cheaper. Provider margins, integration expenses, transition costs, and vendor dependency can erode the savings. The decision must be based on total cost of ownership, not subscription fees alone. A wholistic business value case needs to developed and aligned on before going ahead with either of the two approaches.
The strategic question: What should companies actually own?
Own what differentiates. Outsource what can be standardised. Retain control over both.
Strategic capabilities such as pricing strategy, customer intelligence, and proprietary decision-making should remain within the enterprise. Standardised, high-volume processes are stronger candidates for BPaaS.
However, outsourcing execution should not mean outsourcing accountability. Companies must establish clear SLAs, real-time performance dashboards, quality thresholds, and escalation protocols to proactively detect deviations and intervene before they impact business outcomes.
So what? Shift from an automation-first to an outcome-first strategy
Before investing in another AI agent, business leaders should ask:
- Does owning this process create a competitive advantage?
- How effective is deploying an Agentic AI solution? Does it solve for only happy path or for all scenarios?
- Can a specialist deliver the same outcome at a lower fully loaded cost?
- Can performance, accountability, and data security be contractually protected?
If a process is non-differentiating, economically attractive to outsource, and governed through measurable service commitments, BPaaS can be great candidate for consideration.
The bottom line: The objective is not to build the most AI agents. It is to deliver business outcomes at the lowest sustainable cost while retaining control of what makes the enterprise competitive.
Reach out to Hercules Advisory to assess your processes and understand what can be automated vs outsourced.