Enterprise IT has historically revolved around standardization, consistency, and control. Teams were organized to manage platforms, enforce governance, and ensure uptime. However, the emergence of digital colleagues, agents capable of reasoning, acting, and collaborating, requires a significant shift. The IT management team must reimagine their roles, moving from custodians of technology to strategic designers of intelligent ecosystems.

As digital colleagues join the workforce, the platform-first model of enterprise IT is giving way to a protocol-based architecture that enables intelligence, agility, and coordination across human-AI teams.

Enterprise IT was built around the idea of standardisation. To scale efficiently, organisations invested in platforms that could centralise data, enforce process discipline, and act as the single source of truth. This logic shaped the rise of ERP, CRM and workflow tools - and created a generation of transformation programmes focused on digitising the past.

But that model is starting to collapse.

The rules of enterprise software are being rewritten. For decades, the strategy was clear: standardize processes to cut costs and streamline operations, paving the way for ERP, CRM, and other rigid systems to dominate. These legacy systems belong to an era of fixed processes and centralized control - a model designed for uniformity and efficiency that ultimately locked businesses into inflexible structures

Enterprise software systems were built for a different era - one where businesses operated on fixed processes, structured data, and centralized control. That world no longer exists. Today, companies need real-time adaptability, work with fragmented and unstructured data, and demand flexibility that traditional systems can’t provide.

Perishable goods present unique challenges for supply chains. With short shelf lives, unpredictable demand, and the need for consistent cold chain management, the margin for error is slim. AI, and AI agents - new digital colleagues in supply chain teams - in particular, offers a way to address these complexities, providing advanced capabilities for improving forecasting accuracy, enhancing visibility, and building resilience.