Productivity is what companies gain most from AI
Productivity and autonomy move at different speeds
In a November 4 announcement, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) presented a contrast between the value companies see in artificial intelligence and what they let AI do on its own. The survey indicates that 84% of the executives heard say productivity is the biggest gain they see in AI. Only 10% said their companies let agents decide on their own, with no one approving, in more than one area.
What the 10% actually measures
This percentage does not indicate how many companies use agents. It measures the highest level of freedom: the agent deciding on its own across several areas. About two thirds of respondents said their organizations don't allow autonomous decisions or restrict them to a few cases. Another 24% let the agent act on its own only on defined tasks in one area, and 10% across several areas.
Access and context also weigh in
Only 9% reported that their agents can run the process with the right tools and permissions. The study also reports that 44% of respondents say what matters in the business still lives in people's heads or is scattered across files. The survey doesn't show that one explains the other. It presents the two data points separately.
Security, risk and governance were the factors most cited to guide AI deployment, ahead of cost, speed and ease. For a company evaluating a pilot, the first decision is how far AI can go: which actions AI only recommends, which ones require human review and which ones can be executed. Compare time, cost, errors and rework with the results from before the pilot, and have an easy way to stop everything if it goes wrong.
The survey's limits
The study heard from 1,333 business and technology leaders in 25 countries and 12 sectors. The sample includes 46 respondents from Brazil, out of 153 in Latin America, but the percentages cited are global. The companies represented have revenue from US$ 500 million to more than US$ 20 billion a year, so the results don't directly describe Brazilian small and midsize businesses.
Since the survey was published by TCS itself, a technology services provider, the numbers reflect executives' answers, not an independent measurement of productivity. Each company needs to evaluate the return in its own process before expanding the systems' autonomy.
Sources
Tata Consultancy Services, 4 Nov 2026. https://www.tcs.com/who-we-are/newsroom/press-release/productivity-top-benefit-tcs-enterprise-ai-study
Tata Consultancy Services, 2026. https://www.tcs.com/content/dam/global-tcs/en/pdfs/insights/global-studies/report/enterprise-ai-study-key-findings.pdf