EY Unveils Agentic Enterprise Blueprint, Urging Shift from Bolt-on to Built-in AI

EY unveiled its "EY AI Agentic Enterprise Blueprint" at the 2026 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) on September 10, 2026. Lai Fan, EY Greater China Director of AI and Data Advisory, presented the blueprint, which outlines how enterprises can move from "bolt-on AI" to "built-in AI".

According to EY research, 87% of executives believe there are significant obstacles to scaling agentic AI, and 74% of companies have not yet moved from scattered pilots to scaled value. Meanwhile, about 70% of potential enterprise value lies in cross-departmental and cross-process collaboration.

EY's Value Blueprints approach starts with enterprise value to reshape cross-functional value streams, building reusable enterprise capabilities in data, knowledge, models, agents and governance. The firm also proposed a seven-layer architecture covering customers, talent, process, trust, intelligence, AI-native infrastructure and core systems. The intelligence layer is critical: while large models have world knowledge, enterprises need AI to understand their own data, context and rules to form an "enterprise intelligence foundation" for scaled agent collaboration.

EY said in an agentic enterprise, human roles evolve as AI moves from providing recommendations to executing tasks. People will focus more on complex judgment, innovative decisions and risk oversight, shifting from executors to managers and value orchestrators of agents. Higher agent autonomy also requires embedding permissions, security, compliance, accountability and human oversight throughout AI operations.