Automation Alone Is Dead: The Challenge Is Making Everything Work Together

By Allexey Bernacchi, CEO & Founder of Smarthis

Automation solved one of the biggest challenges in operations: removing manual work from processes.

For years, this was exactly what drove real efficiency gains. RPA, workflows, and automation initiatives were essential to accelerating processes and scaling operations. And they still are.

But as these initiatives advanced, a new scenario emerged. Companies did not become less automated. They became more complex.

Today, many operations are made up of multiple automations, systems, and applications, each efficient within its own context, but without a clear logic connecting the whole. In other words, the challenge has evolved.

What the Data Shows

Recent research from MIT Sloan Management Review indicates that 35% of companies have already adopted AI agents, and another 44% are on their way, but many still lack a defined strategy to coordinate this advancement.

At the same time, 76% of executives already view these agents more as a colleague than as a tool.

This is not an isolated trend; it is a global movement. The focus has shifted from automating tasks to coordinating systems that think, execute, and learn together.

With the advancement of AI, operations are no longer only about execution. They now depend on continuous coordination.

More automation alone does not solve this. More AI does not either. The solution is organizing how everything connects.

This is where orchestration takes center stage. Not as a replacement for what has already been built, but as the layer that allows everything to generate value in an integrated way.

This is the approach Smarthis brings to companies across different industries, especially CSCs and GBS organizations, where the demand for scale, efficiency, and consistency is higher.

This evolution involves adopting Agentic Automation models, where systems move beyond simply executing tasks and begin to interpret, decide, and act with context, connecting end-to-end processes.

It Is Not a Break from the Past. It Is the Next Step.

Increasingly, what differentiates companies is not how much they automate, but how effectively they can connect, coordinate, and scale what they have already built.

An example of this evolution is the case “BRAX, the autonomous agents project that transformed Vibra Energia’s operations.”

Started in 2019, the initiative evolved from isolated automations into a structured operational execution platform, connecting processes, data, and intelligence. Today, with more than 160 active agents and over 400,000 hours returned to the business annually, BRAX shows how automation can evolve from operational efficiency into a strategic orchestration capability.

Read the full case study