Inside frontier firms: rewriting the operating model of work

By 2028, over 50 percent of enterprises are estimated to shift from assistive AI to AI platforms that deliver end-to-end workflow outcomes. This is according to recent research by Gartner.

Over the last year, there has been a significant shift in this direction. Organisations have moved from deciding on whether to use AI to deciding where to use AI, from whether to buy licenses to how to use and maximise the same. Now, organisations are not only using AI to speed up existing work and bring efficiencies, but also to change the way they do business and drive business outcomes.

AI has also accelerated the modernisation journeys across technology stacks. In the past, the time taken and the costs were so high that these journeys were kept on the back burner, but now, these have become more affordable, and years have decreased to months.

All this means that frontier firms need to positively impact decisions and the associated ROI. This, in turn, means they need to understand the business and business processes a lot better. There are basic shifts needed in the way they operate.

Culture and the way teams operate

This is the largest shift driving outcomes. Teams need to start thinking AI-first and reimagine the way business is done today. They need to have enough domain knowledge, a good understanding of AI, and, finally, above all, the intent to be the change champion. This is a huge shift, as it is not only about augmenting existing work with AI, but also about reimagining it completely and bringing AI to accomplish the outcomes. This will need a lot of preparation and training, and this is going to be the cornerstone for the change. Firms like Infosys are spending significant amounts of time and investing appropriately to enable this.

Understanding the role of different stakeholders in the organisation

Organisations should understand the shift from tech-driven to business-driven outcomes. They need to create greater interactions with Business Heads, CHROs, etc. to redefine the processes, ways of working, and experiences. The CISO has a critical role to play in implementing the security and RAI guidelines. There is also a need to relook at the touchpoints and positioning of ROI.

Focus is moving to outcomes

For decades, work was mainly measured through effort. Planning was centred on headcount, hours were tracked, and performance was judged by how much got done. As AI takes on a growing share of execution, those old measures often carry less weight. Speed to resolution matters more now, so does the quality of decisions being made, and whether the business is actually hitting its goals. Today, the new contracts being signed have “gain sharing” models and focus on rewards and penalties. Reporting associated with outcomes is also changing. In the past, it used to typically mean building around a set of questions that someone anticipated people would ask, shaped by whatever dashboard existed. Now, AI agents often talk directly with users, figure out what they actually need, and shape answers around that instead of using a template. The result: faster, better decisions. That is why frontier firms are increasingly rebuilding workflows, so that AI covers routine execution while people stay focused on context and intent.

Orchestrating intelligent work

As AI takes on more of the execution, the way people create value evolves too - from simply doing the work to directing how intelligent agents work together. This typically involves deciding which agents to deploy, keeping their interactions coordinated, checking their outputs, and applying business judgment wherever context matters.

Autonomous AMS is fast becoming a reality. A leading energy provider in Europe has worked on a blueprint to make all of their workplace autonomous, using the orchestrator agent working across multiple agents.

There is also the whole element of experience that can be redesigned using orchestrations. With most products now going headless and supporting integration through an MCP layer, this is just the right time for creating experiences directly on Teams and Outlook as opposed to having to go to portals.

Frontier firms are putting real budgets behind these, and tuning their AI agents as the business changes around them.

Transforming the economics of work

ROI will increasingly take centre stage with costs mounting on tokens and execution; the key driver will be to start showing early wins and returns. According to recent Gartner research, more than 40 percent of agentic AI projects are expected to be cancelled by the end of 2027, due to unclear business value, high costs, or insufficient risk controls. Instead of simply layering AI onto what already exists, frontier firms are redesigning the workflows underneath it.

The changing economics of AI are also expanding enterprise ambition. Modernisation initiatives once shelved for cost, complexity, or long delivery timelines are back on the table as AI compresses timelines and reduces transformation effort. Frontier firms are rethinking modernisation on a scale that would have been hard to justify only a few years ago. There are large banks, telecom providers, and energy providers who have already set out on this journey. The old MF/AS400 applications, the platforms, the databases (DBs) on both the extraction and consumption sides, which looked largely untouchable, are all now within scope.

Simply adopting AI early will not decide who leads the next decade of enterprise AI; redesigning work around it will. As per Gartner, by 2030, software companies that keep layering AI onto legacy applications instead of redesigning them for agentic execution could face margin compression of up to 80 percent - a lesson that extends well beyond software. Frontier firms already see where this is headed: while AI manages the flow of work, deciding what truly holds value remains in human hands.

Written By - Anand Iyer, VP and Global Delivery Head – Digital Workplace Ecosystem and Microsoft Practice, Infosys.

Read More:

AI-powered managed services: Where the next channel opportunity lies

TSC Auto ID Concludes 4-City Solution Day 2026 to Accelerate Integrated AIDC and RFID Growth in India

Epson inkjet printers: Why the bigger channel opportunity is beyond hardware

Beyond the SLA: Who owns the business outcome?