Beyond the chatbot: Seizing the real agentic advantage

At this year's Leeds Digital Festival, Jaywing’s Malcolm Clifford (Data Science Strategy Director) and Joe Crawforth (Head of Research and Development) led the session, ‘The Agentic Advantage: Putting AI to Work While Your Competitors Talk’. They examined the why, how and what for developing autonomous agents that can go beyond assisting with tasks and help to automate whole processes and deliver business goals. 

Here are the key takeaways on why this isn't just another tech trend, but a fundamental opportunity to gain a real, data-driven edge and change the way we work. 

So, what exactly is Agentic AI? 

With a chatbot you type (or speak) a request and in most cases you have to manually take whatever action is suggested by the response. An agentic model is a significant leap forward because it’s connected up as part of the business process. Instead of a request you set AI a goal, you give it a secure set of tools to work with (like access to your CRM or ad platforms), and it has the agency to devise and execute a multi-step plan. 

Malcolm explained it as the difference between asking AI to "draft an email for a prospect" and instructing it to "convert that prospect using communications as appropriate". The agent doesn’t just generate text; it interacts with its environment in a continuous loop: 

• Observe: It monitors real-time data from your platforms; a CRM, an ad account or Google Analytics for example. 
• Analyse: It uses this data to understand context. It might see a prospect has not only downloaded a white paper but has now visited your pricing page. 
• Decide: Based on its analysis of the current state of the customer and the goal you’ve set, it formulates a plan. 
• Act: It takes action using its approved tools, perhaps sending a personalised follow-up email directly from your CRM without a human needing to press ‘send’. 

This is where the true power lies: unlocking genuine data-driven marketing by allowing technology not just to report on data, but to act on it at machine speed, 24/7. 

Getting started: A practical framework for marketers 

The prospect of implementing this might sound complex, but Joe broke it down into a clear, actionable approach. The first step is to identify your use cases by mapping routine tasks on an impact vs. complexity matrix. This quickly reveals the quick wins; those low-complexity, high-impact tasks perfect for an initial pilot. 

From there, you have two distinct paths: 

• The no-code path: Using intuitive, prompt-based platforms like Google's Vertex AI Agent Builder, non-technical domain specialists can build their own agents to connect data sources and automate workflows. It’s perfect for streamlining tasks like pulling data from multiple sources for a report, reducing a process that takes hours to mere minutes. 
• The expert path: For more complex processes a developer-led approach is needed. This is where you can build custom tools that allow an agent to perform highly specific tasks such as optimising ad spend in real-time or updating your CRM with new lead intelligence. 

The return on investment is measured in three clear ways:  

1. A performance lift from better decision making 
2. Efficiency gains from automating time-consuming manual tasks 
3. Using the time savings to free up your experts to focus on high-value work. 

The golden rule: Safety and a human in the loop 

Granting AI a level of autonomy requires robust guardrails. You must be highly specific with the goals you set and the accesses and permissions you grant.  Treat the agent like a new team member, start with close monitoring of the output until you gain confidence in the agent’s ability to get it right, and retain a ‘human in the loop’ for critical decisions or where mistakes could prove costly. The goal is to remove the manual work from the process, not the expert oversight. 

At Jaywing, we’ve deployed agents to automate CRM lead enrichment, pre-populate our timesheets from project data and generate initial commentary for performance reports. In each case, the result is the same; our teams are freed from repetitive tasks to focus on what they do best: delivering strategic insights and transformative results for our clients. 

The tools to build these systems are becoming more accessible every day. The agentic advantage is here, now. It's a clear opportunity to automate complexity, operate with greater speed, and build a smarter, more effective marketing function. 

The benefit of using AI agents is clear but moving from idea to implementation contains some challenges. Our approach is simple: you focus on the business objectives you want to achieve and we provide the expertise to help make it a reality. 

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