Get unstuck from the sprawl-or-stall loop
In talking with mid-market leaders about their AI-related challenges, I’ve noticed two recurring narratives. The first set of frustrations is about moving too quickly. In these organizations, IT leaders know that employees are using unapproved AI systems to support day-to-day work. Someone from finance is running company data through a tool IT has never heard of. Someone in sales is feeding client information into an ungoverned platform. The genie is out of the bottle. When this IT leader’s head hits the pillow, the nagging worry is always the same: What’s happening on my network that I can’t see, much less control?
The second theme is about moving too slowly. These leaders have a process or workflow they want to move to an agent. They may have completed a successful pilot to prove the concept. But while preparing to launch, somebody gets nervous about security or compliance. So instead of being deployed, the agent gets canceled. Or, in another common scenario, a C-suite exec demands hard numbers about costs and ROI, and no one has reliable answers. These leaders keep asking: What does it take to get our AI and agentic initiatives off the ground?
And yet, most of the noise in the market right now doesn’t address either of these narratives. Everybody’s shouting the same two words — “at scale” — as if the answer to a mid-market problem is simply to think bigger.
Why boring beats bigger
From my perspective, both scenarios have the same root issue: a lack of capability.
Mid-market organizations have plenty of AI ambition. Most have acquired some tools. Many even have a substantial budget to devote to AI. What they don’t have is a dedicated AI and data team. It’s different in large enterprises, where there’s someone to build what the business wants — securely, wired into the right systems, and without widening the attack surface.
Without that capability, mid-market companies get stuck in a sprawl-or-stall loop.
The truth is, getting value from AI doesn’t require you to reinvent what matters to your business. I would argue it’s better to be “boring” by starting with one repeatable, high-volume process you already understand and measure.
Once you’ve agreed on a process, define success before you build anything. This step is crucial to answering the inevitable questions from your C-suite. If you can describe the process and articulate a positive outcome, you’ve already done most of the hard work.
Then — and only then — focus on the unglamorous parts:
- Is the environment secure?
- Is the data trustworthy?
- Are the connections into the systems you already run clean and governed?
That’s where the true complexity will always live. You can’t govern what you can’t see, so the same foundation that lets you deploy an agent safely also lets you watch it while it runs.
How CBTS is helping mid-market organizations with AI agents
CBTS has developed Forge Agents to help mid-market organizations tap into the capability required to build, deploy, and run AI agents. In doing so, we’re following two key principles:
- Your agents should live in your existing environment — in your own cloud, next to your own data — and they should reach into your CRM, ERP, service desk, finance, and other business systems. Establishing these connections cleanly and securely is what separates a demo from something durable.
- Your business needs flexibility. You could hand the work to a single AI platform and hope they stay ahead. But today’s top model may not be the cheapest or best for the job six months from now, and the last thing you want is a digital worker you can’t move. Our approach enables you to stay agnostic: Pick the right model for each task. Send expensive reasoning to a capable model, high-volume grunt work to a cheaper one. Keep the freedom to make changes.
With this foundation in place, deploying the next digital worker is no longer a technical project. Instead, you can describe the job in plain language, and the agent gets built.
But you can’t skip the prep and expect that payoff. By doing the unglamorous work first, you go from needing outside help for every new idea to running the play at speed and scale. And because you set it up right, you know what you’re paying for (and what it should return) before you sign anything.
Turn ‘boring’ into business value
Whether you’re challenged by sprawl or stall, the path forward is the same: Pick one thing that matters, decide what winning looks like, and turn pressure into progress. Get in touch if you’d like to explore how CBTS can help you choose your use case, build and implement an agent, and then govern and secure it.