Digital Transformation Trends 2025: AI Impact

Digital Transformation in 2025

MuleSoft research suggests that businesses are entering an age of hybrid work, where AI agents will augment the human workforce, leading to the autonomous enterprise. Here are the top seven trends that Mulesoft says will shape digital transformation in 2025. Here are some key findings from the first five trends.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) reports that nearly a quarter of jobs will undergo structural change in the next five years due to technological advancements and economic shifts. Deloitte found that most business leaders believe autonomous workforces will drive innovation and agility within their organizations and are well-positioned to realize these benefits. Almost all IT leaders claim their teams are involved in projects aimed at building connected experiences that streamline workflows across an autonomous digital workforce.

AI Integration and Challenges

Capgemini predicts that most organizations plan to integrate AI agents across their operations within the next three years and plan to use small language models, noting these models are easier to tailor and fine-tune for specific needs.

Frost & Sullivan reports that common user frustrations with virtual agents include poor error recovery, slow resolution, and technical difficulty. Poor integration is a common theme, as agents unable to access necessary data and capabilities have limited impact. Many IT leaders say integration issues impede AI adoption.

API and Agent Sprawl

The surge in demand for AI capabilities will worsen API and agent sprawl, which occurs when teams build integrations and automations without centralized management. An estimated quarter of APIs are ungoverned. A recent study found that a majority of IT and security practitioners said their organizations had at least one data breach due to API exploitation. The security problem is expected to worsen as multi-agent architectures expand. Gartner forecasts that many enterprise breaches will be traced back to AI agent abuse by 2028.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Robotic process automation (RPA) is already helping organizations enhance efficiency, cut operational costs, and reduce manual toil. Deloitte predicts near-universal adoption of the technology by 2028. By 2025, organizations will evolve their use of RPA technology to reduce the need for humans at every stage of the operational process, using autonomous agents to conduct more of the heavy-lifting work. Gartner expects that most RPA vendors will offer Gen AI-assisted automation capabilities in 2025.

Workforce Transformation

Organizations are undergoing wholesale transformation, which will see their existing work structures dismantled in 2025 as AI becomes more centrally embedded in employee roles. Accenture claims a large percentage of all working hours can be impacted by LLMs. By intelligently automating worker tasks, organizations can drive productivity increases and save on operating costs, according to IDC. A majority of IT leaders believe the application of AI has increased developer productivity in their organization. Deloitte found that most organizations have increased their investments in data management, recognizing that developers will need robust data infrastructures to deploy AI solutions effectively. Gartner found that over half of organizations now have a head of AI or an AI leader who is responsible for directing the overall strategy behind AI adoption.

Thanks to AI integration, business leaders are no longer forced to compromise between high performance and stability. The trends shaping digital transformation in 2025 highlight how AI can help us design our companies like a Stealth aircraft. The trends also reveal that high-performing companies use AI to offload tasks and supercharge their teams, a combination of cognitive transfer and cognitive upgrades.