Agentic AI is everywhere, and it holds the massive potential to transform the way we work, enhance efficiency, and amplify value — all while simplifying our daily tasks.
The autonomy of AI agents in decision-making and innovative problem-solving is what makes this disruptive technology so attractive to companies, yet also one that demands focus and clarity.
Organizations need to understand where it is appropriate to deploy AI agents while ensuring they behave as intended: staying within their operational scope, using only authorized data, and maintaining compliance with the company’s guidelines and regulations.
If in the world of espionage, agents would normally operate in the shadows, in the corporate world, companies need to ensure that AI agents operate in plain sight. Their behavior should be transparent, measurable, and always under control.
As organizations scale their use of agentic AI, the specter of a new challenge emerges: understanding where exactly in their processes agents should be applied, if they are acting the way they are supposed to, and what their impact and cost really are. After all, AI agents are a business resource like any other, and should always be governed by an organization’s leadership, in alignment with that organization’s goals.
This is where agent mining capabilities in SAP Signavio solutions come into play, bringing visibility, accountability, and continuous optimization to the growing ecosystem of AI-driven process transformation.
The problem: invisible autonomy in enterprise AI
AI agents become more autonomous — and sometimes more ambiguous — as they learn and evolve. Their decisions happen in milliseconds, driven by complex reasoning that can appear as an invisible black box to end users.
Without transparency, organizations risk blind automation, which means agents operate efficiently on paper but unpredictably in practice, potentially introducing errors, inefficiencies, or unnecessary costs.
At the same time, agents operating visibly allow organizations to see and learn from the agents’ behavior, potentially revealing new approaches, creative solutions to existing problems, or unexpected positive outcomes.
The solution: AI Agent mining
Agent mining enables organizations to understand and optimize the behavior of AI agents operating across their business processes. Agent mining in SAP Signavio solutions provides the ability to:
- Trace agent behavior to see how agents make decisions, navigate process steps, and adapt to different contexts
- Analyze impact and measure the agents’ influence on key metrics like process time, accuracy, and compliance
- Monitor cost by tracking computational or LLM-related expenses, helping ensure cost-efficient performance
- Benchmark performance by comparing outcomes of agent runs to identify areas for refinement
But it’s also more than just a monitoring tool. AI agent mining is an intelligence layer for the AI workforce. By transforming invisible actions into measurable insights, it empowers organizations to:
- Increase transparency into agent behavior and decision logic
- Control operational costs by understanding and optimizing LLM usage
- Ensure compliance through auditable decision trails
- Continuously improve performance by learning from live agent execution
- Measure true business value of AI automation, not just efficiency metrics
Agent mining from SAP Signavio can extend from Joule Agents built by SAP to third-party or custom-built AI agents, offering a unified lens across an organization’s AI landscape.
A broader vision: AI agent excellence
Unless we’re watching the Mission: Impossible franchise, no one wants to see rogue agents on the loose, which is why agent mining is just one of four pillars under SAP Signavio’s comprehensive approach to AI agent excellence. The pillars that help ensure intelligent agents are not just deployed, but deployed intelligently, include:
- Agent discovery: Identifying the right processes and opportunities where AI agents can drive the greatest impact
- Agent context: Providing agents with the right process knowledge and compliance parameters to act responsibly and efficiently
- Agent mining: As outlined above, observing and analyzing how agents actually behave in operation
- Agent value impact: Quantifying the business value that agents deliver, such as efficiency gains, cost savings, or improved customer experience
Together, these pillars ensure that organizations not only automate processes but continuously learn from and improve their performance. The world is not enough; it’s critical to have both working in sync.
As SAP Signavio General Manager Dr. Gero Decker shared, “AI agents represent a fundamentally new paradigm, and a key question remains: How should we perceive them? Should we view AI agents as advanced technical constructs or as non-human humans? It’s a complex question that organizations must address as they deploy AI agents at scale.”
“At SAP Signavio, we are preparing for the future by focusing on the organizational and process dimensions of agentic AI adoption,” he said. “Our AI agent excellence approach aims to ensure that AI agents are integrated seamlessly, efficiently, and compliantly into the broader enterprise. In this rapidly evolving landscape, no company can afford to stand still. Our vision is to be an engine for innovation and reinvention, helping companies grow and adapt.”
SAP Signavio solutions can empower organizations to ensure their AI agents are not only effective but also transparent and accountable, paving the way for smarter, more strategic automation — in other words, AI agent excellence.
Lucas de Boer is a Global Marketing program lead for SAP Signavio.
