As Global Work Transforms, Experts Ask: Is Agentic AI The New Offshoring?

For years, companies have chased efficiency by offshoring work. Now, many of those same workflows are prime candidates for a new kind of delegation: autonomous agentic systems. The moment is forcing a fundamental re-evaluation of where work gets done and how it's structured. Are AI agents the new offshoring?

To some executives, the future of AI looks surprisingly familiar. Preetha Sekharan, Vice President leading the Digital Incubator, Applied AI, and Transformation division at insurance company Unum Group, knows precisely how AI is reshaping the enterprise. Drawing on her experience leading multi-million-dollar initiatives at consulting firms like McKinsey and Booz & Company, she said the signs of a significant transformation are becoming increasingly clear.

• Services as software: A new paradigm is already emerging, according to Sekharan. "Leaders are entering this new territory where, instead of software-as-a-service, they're thinking about services as software. It's a fundamental re-imagining of how services could be delivered."

• Flipped on its head: Instead of just automating tasks, leaders must use AI to re-evaluate operations from the ground up, Sekharan said. "The old playbook, where leaders get to choose between improving, outsourcing, or automating, is now obsolete. The old criteria have been flipped on their heads. Now, we have to re-examine old processes and rethink entire systems, end-to-end."