​The Agent Management Function: A New Capability For The AI-Native CIO

Laks Alagappan, VP & Client Engagement Manager at Genpact, leads enterprise technology delivery for Tier 1 banks across the UK and Europe.

Enterprise IT organizations have developed new capabilities with every technology shift. From cybersecurity and data management to cloud engineering and production support, leaders have had to establish new disciplines with each shift.

Agentic AI may require the next discipline.

As enterprises move from AI experiments to growing portfolios of production agents, a question will emerge: Who will manage this expanding estate?

The answer may lie in a new federated capability: agent management. This discipline focuses on how models and agents are orchestrated, contextualized, governed, monitored and managed throughout their lifecycle. Anchored within the AI-native organization, agent management could involve responsibilities across business, technology, data and control functions.

Agent management could bridge the gap between AI governance and operational execution, translating policies and standards into the day-to-day management of AI agents across the enterprise.

Why Agents Require Dedicated Management

Traditional enterprise IT is organized around people and the technology assets and services they design, build and operate: applications, infrastructure, networks and data platforms.

Agents introduce a different management challenge. Organizations must govern the decisions agents make and the actions they take, alongside the software itself. As agents interpret objectives, formulate plans, retrieve information and invoke applications, they need clear authority limits, traceable decisions and defined points for human intervention.

At scale, managing that authority cannot remain an informal responsibility spread across architecture, engineering, data, cybersecurity and individual programs. It requires an enterprise capability with clear ownership and accountability.

Six Core Capabilities

Agent management involves six key components:​