Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic idea for Canadian businesses. In 2025, adoption of what is known as “agentic AI,” meaning systems that can act independently to complete tasks, is rising rapidly across industries.
According to a new survey by KPMG Canada of 252 business leaders, 27% of organizations have already deployed agentic AI, while 64% are either experimenting or running pilot projects. Looking ahead, 57% of respondents said they plan to invest in or adopt agentic AI within the next six months, and another 34% expect adoption within the next 12 months. This shows strong momentum among companies that are not only interested in AI but preparing to move from testing to operational use. Many leaders believe that agentic AI can reduce costs, increase efficiency, and help bridge gaps in skills and capacity.
However, other data suggests full integration remains limited. Another recent report by KPMG indicates that while 93% of Canadian business leaders say their organizations are using AI in some form, only a third of them have fully integrated generative AI across their core workflows.
Together, these findings show that Canadian businesses are enthusiastic and moving forward. They also underscore the need for strategic planning and expert support, especially for small and medium-sized organizations that may not have internal resources to build or manage AI systems on their own.
Microsoft’s Vision of the Future of Agentic AI
At recent Microsoft Ignite 2025, the vision for AI in the workplace was laid out with clarity. Agentic AI is now central to productivity and collaboration across the Microsoft ecosystem.
One major announcement was Microsoft Agent 365. This serves as a management layer to give IT teams visibility over all AI agents within an organization. Admins can set permissions, review activity logs, enforce compliance policies, and manage access to business data.
Microsoft also introduced a new intelligence layer inside Microsoft 365 Copilot called Work IQ. It helps Copilot and its agents understand the tasks people are working on, how teams collaborate, and what information is relevant to each role. Agents can learn individual preferences over time, then predict next steps, suggest useful workflows, or automate repetitive tasks.
New agent capabilities are arriving directly within core apps such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Copilot can operate in an agent mode that drafts documents, builds spreadsheet models, or designs presentations based on company context and past work patterns.
Microsoft also unveiled business-oriented agents, like a “Sales Development Agent” that automatically works with CRM data to support lead generation. Other agents for workforce insight, operational workflows, and real-time analytics are also part of the plan.
Together these developments show that Microsoft is building human-agent collaboration directly into the tools people use every day not just as experiments or side tools, but as core parts of how work gets done.
Canadian Firms Are Already Using Copilot and Agents
Although agentic AI is relatively new, some Canadian small and medium sized businesses and larger firms as well have begun applying these tools in meaningful ways.
Some companies have introduced Copilot agents to handle a portion of routine customer service requests. Agents manage common inquiries, track order status and even process returns when appropriate. This reduces wait times and frees human staff to focus on more complex issues that require empathy or judgment. Customer response, order tracking, and support tasks are among the early areas where agents are deployed.
Sales and marketing teams are deploying agents to support lead generation. Agents can assemble and update prospect lists, personalize outreach messages, and help schedule follow-up communications. This allows sales professionals to spend more time meeting with qualified leads and closing deals. The “Sales Development Agent” example announced at Ignite aligns closely with this use case.
Teams with heavy administrative or document-intensive workloads are also gaining benefits. Some firms use agents to draft standard contracts, generate financial reports, or produce policy updates. With agents integrated into familiar tools such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the learning curve remains manageable and productivity gains appear quickly.
These real examples show agentic AI is starting to transform business workflows in Canada. Adoption is not about replacing people. It is about enabling employees to focus on higher-value, creative, or strategic work.
How Agentic AI Could Reshape Work for Canadian SMBs: Industry-by-Industry Ideas
Looking forward, agentic AI holds strong promise across many sectors in Canada. Below are some ideas for how small and medium businesses might apply AI agents to improve everyday operations.
Legal and Professional Services
Legal or consulting firms could use agents to automate drafting of standard documents like nondisclosure agreements, contracts, client engagement letters, or retainer agreements. Agents could populate key fields using client data, maintain consistency in formatting, and reduce administrative workload while cutting down on human error.
Agents could also assist with research workflows. For instance, when preparing briefs or memos, an agent might scan case databases, pull relevant precedents or statutes, summarize findings, and assemble an initial draft for review. This is especially valuable for smaller firms that lack large research departments.
Compliance and deadline tracking is another area where agents can help. Agents can monitor important dates like filing deadlines or contract renewals, send reminders, and ensure required documents are reviewed and signed on time.
Finance and Insurance
In finance or insurance firms, agents could automate routine tasks such as generating regular financial reports, compiling budgets or forecasts, or reconciling transactions by pulling data from multiple systems. Agents working in spreadsheet tools like Excel can save significant time compared to manual data entry.
Customer-facing agents can answer common account or policy questions, assist with standard applications, or guide clients through onboarding processes. This allows human staff to focus on complex or high-value advisory tasks rather than routine support.
Agents can also support risk management. For instance, they might flag anomalies or suspicious transactions, monitor compliance data, or run audits across large data sets, helping firms stay on top of regulations and reduce errors.
Manufacturing and Operations
Manufacturers or operations-oriented businesses could benefit from agents that automate order processing and supply-chain workflows. For example, when a purchase order arrives, an agent could log it, update inventory records, notify vendors, and schedule deliveries, thus reducing manual work and lowering the chance of mistakes.
Agents can also compile regular operational reports: production output, inventory levels, maintenance schedules, quality control logs, and more. This gives management up-to-date visibility without having to manually assemble spreadsheets or reports.
For firms with regulatory or safety requirements, agents could support compliance documentation by generating safety reports, equipment maintenance logs, or compliance checklists. Automating these tasks saves time while helping ensure accuracy and consistency.
Marketing, Administration and Business Services
Marketing or administrative agencies could use agents to draft proposals, marketing materials, newsletters, social media posts, or client reports. Agents can adapt to brand guidelines and tone, helping produce consistent content quickly.
Human resources and administrative teams can automate onboarding, benefits enrolment paperwork, scheduling, internal communications, and recurring tasks such as monthly reports or team updates. Agents might also manage scheduling workflows and reminders.
Project-based teams could use agents integrated with project-tracking or CRM tools to pull data, prepare status updates, track deadlines, coordinate meetings, and send reminders, improving collaboration and reducing administrative overhead.
Non-Profit and Community Organizations
Non-profits and community groups often operate with small teams and limited resources. Agents could help lighten administrative burden by drafting grant proposals, funding applications, impact reports, and donor communications.
Agents could manage volunteer coordination: scheduling, role assignments, communications, reminders, reducing administrative strain on small staff.
They could also handle regular outreach and community engagement: newsletters, updates, event planning coordination, stakeholder communication. Automating these tasks can let small teams focus on mission-driven work rather than paperwork.
Across all industries, agentic AI offers a compelling value proposition: automating repetitive, routine, or data-heavy tasks, while freeing human staff to focus on creative, strategic, or client-facing work.
Why MSP Corp Is the Ideal Partner for Agentic AI Adoption
Even though agentic AI is becoming more visible and accessible, many organizations remain uncertain about how to start, where to apply it, and how to maintain governance, security, and alignment with business objectives.
At MSP Corp we provide a full range of services to guide you through this transformation. We start by assessing your existing workflows to identify where AI agents could deliver the greatest impact, whether that means improving efficiency, cutting costs, improving collaboration, or freeing up human capacity for high-value work.
We help design and implement custom AI agents tailored to your industry, data environment, and operational needs, whether your business needs automated customer support, document generation, financial workflows, operational reporting, or other specialized processes.
We also provide integration support and change management to ensure agents are deployed securely, comply with your data governance and privacy requirements, and align with your long-term business strategy. And we deliver training so that your team feels confident using AI as a productive, sustainable part of everyday work.
If you are ready to explore how agentic AI can transform your workflows and give your team more bandwidth for creative and strategic work, MSP Corp is ready to help. Contact us to begin your AI adoption journey.