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Bridging the Great Divide: How Smartsheet’s New AI Agents Orchestrate Enterprise Strategy to Reality
Maya, a seasoned COO with a global tech firm, often found herself staring at her desk, its surface gleaming under the sharp office lights.
It was not the pile of reports that weighed her down; it was the gnawing sense that her meticulously crafted strategies were often lost in translation on their journey to execution.
She saw countless projects, each with its own budget, timeline, and team, sprawling across a dozen different tools, each speaking a different digital language.
The irony was not lost on her: in an age of hyper-connectivity, the enterprise still felt like a collection of brilliant minds working in silos, missing the grand orchestra.
This quiet frustration, the chasm between ambition and day-to-day reality, is precisely the problem the next wave of intelligent work management seeks to solve.
Smartsheet recently unveiled an AI agent-first platform at its 2025 ENGAGE conference, designed to revolutionize how enterprises manage work.
By leveraging generative and agentic AI, this platform aims to seamlessly connect strategy with execution, enhancing productivity and collaboration across the entire organization.
Why This Matters Now: The Unseen Costs of Disconnected Work
Maya’s experience is not unique; it is a widespread challenge.
Many leaders grapple with the struggle to bridge strategy and execution, often leading to siloed data and reactive decision-making.
Despite significant investments in digital tools, the sheer complexity of modern enterprises means that vision often dissipates into a fog of fragmented workflows and misaligned efforts.
We have automated tasks, yes, but we have not yet mastered intelligent orchestration – the ability to make every part of the business work in concert, understanding the ‘why’ behind each action.
This challenge is particularly acute in large organizations.
According to Smartsheet’s 2025 ENGAGE Announcement Report, 85 percent of Fortune 500 companies already utilize Smartsheet to manage projects, budgets, and strategic execution.
This statistic underscores a critical need: if even the most sophisticated companies rely on platforms like Smartsheet, the demand for more intelligent, interconnected work solutions is immense and growing.
The future is not just about doing work faster; it is about thinking and adapting faster.
The Execution Gap: When Strategy Gets Lost in the Weeds
The core problem, as many a C-suite executive will attest, is the execution gap.
We craft elegant strategies in boardrooms, full of grand visions and ambitious targets.
But then these strategies are handed down, dissected, and often reassembled into a mosaic of departmental tasks that bear little resemblance to the original masterpiece.
It is like designing a magnificent symphony only for each musician to play their part in isolation, without hearing the others.
The whole becomes less than the sum of its parts.
A common pitfall is that increased automation, while boosting efficiency in specific areas, can inadvertently amplify this disconnect if not orchestrated intelligently.
An accounting department automates invoicing, an HR department automates onboarding, a marketing team automates campaigns—all highly efficient in their own right.
But without a unified, intelligent layer to connect these automated streams, the enterprise still operates in a series of optimized but uncoordinated sprints, rather than a cohesive marathon.
The counterintuitive insight here is that simply automating more tasks does not guarantee strategic alignment; sometimes, it just automates silos deeper.
The Global Product Launch That Missed Its Mark
Imagine a global product launch.
The marketing team crafts a brilliant campaign, the engineering team hits its release deadline, and sales teams are prepped with new materials.
Yet, the launch falters.
Why?
The regional legal teams are still reviewing compliance documents, manufacturing delays in one geography were not communicated effectively to sales in another, and the customer support portal was not updated with the new product FAQs until days after launch.
Each team worked diligently, but without an intelligent, unifying system, critical interdependencies were missed.
The vision of a synchronized global debut dissolved into a series of staggered, reactive patches.
This is not a failure of effort; it is a failure of intelligent orchestration.
What the Research Really Says: Smartsheet’s AI Agent Revolution
The unveiling of Smartsheet’s new AI agent platform at its 2025 ENGAGE conference marks a pivotal moment, shifting the focus from mere automation to intelligent orchestration.
The platform is designed to align people, data, and decisions under a single, intelligent layer, as per Smartsheet’s 2025 ENGAGE Announcement Report.
This is not just an upgrade; it is a foundational rethink of how work flows within an enterprise.
The platform marks a pivotal shift from mere automation to intelligent orchestration.
While most enterprises have automated routine work, the next frontier is intelligent orchestration, meaning AI that not only executes tasks but understands their underlying purpose.
This represents a monumental shift for tech buyers, moving from reactive task management to proactive outcome management.
The practical implication is a future where AI anticipates needs and potential roadblocks, rather than merely reporting on them.
Central to this transformation is Smartsheet’s new Knowledge Graph.
This dynamic data model, acting as the platform’s brain, links people, projects, and data across the entire enterprise, according to Smartsheet’s 2025 ENGAGE Announcement Report.
This powerful enterprise nervous system transforms disparate data points into contextualized insights, creating a unified operational fabric where AI intelligently orchestrates work.
On the topic of collaborative AI augmenting human intelligence, Rajeev Singh, CEO of Smartsheet, has stated that Intelligent Work Management serves as the operating model for modern enterprises.
He noted that Smartsheet provides collaborative AI, secured by customer data, and designed to enhance human intelligence, thereby initiating a new era of work that allows teams to perform with increased speed and accuracy.
This highlights a clear moral core: AI is not replacing human judgment but amplifying it.
The practical implication for leaders is a workforce empowered by AI, not displaced, leading to greater innovation and faster strategic adaptation.
For tech buyers concerned about transparency and compliance, Smartsheet is also introducing Smart Hub, launching in 2026.
This central control center will allow enterprises to define how AI interacts with their data, monitor usage, and even build custom digital agents, according to Smartsheet.
This offers a notable shift toward responsible and explainable AI, providing a trusted pathway to AI adoption where CIOs and COOs can maintain oversight and ensure data security without compromising agility.
Playbook You Can Use Today: Orchestrating Intelligent Work
Adopting an intelligent work management platform like Smartsheet’s new AI agent platform is a strategic evolution, not an overnight switch.
Leaders should begin by auditing existing work management tools and identifying significant friction points where strategy disconnects from execution, pinpointing information black holes or consistent project stalls.
Next, define clear, measurable AI-ready outcomes, such as accelerating project delivery by a specific percentage or improving resource allocation.
Instead of implementing AI for its own sake, focus on these tangible business outcomes.
Start small by piloting with a high-impact, low-risk project, critical enough to demonstrate value but contained enough to manage initial challenges.
This could be a new product development cycle or a complex marketing campaign.
Leverage conversational AI tools like Smart Assist to help design new projects or configure automations.
This dramatically reduces setup time and embeds best practices from the start, essentially providing an expert project designer on call 24/7.
Empower teams with Smart Flows for workflow creation by encouraging them to build multi-step automations using plain language.
This democratizes workflow creation, allowing those closest to the work to optimize it without needing deep technical expertise.
Integrate Smart Agents, such as the Project Manager Agent, to continuously monitor progress, identify risks, and recommend optimizations.
This shifts project management from reactive problem-solving to proactive risk mitigation and timeline optimization, as detailed by Smartsheet’s 2025 ENGAGE Announcement Report.
As you scale, plan for governance with Smart Hub by defining how AI interacts with your data, monitoring usage, and building custom agents.
This ensures your AI deployment is responsible, transparent, and aligned with organizational policies.
Risks, Trade-offs, and Ethics: Navigating the AI Frontier
The promise of AI agents is immense, but so are the responsibilities.
Adopting an advanced platform like Smartsheet’s comes with its own set of considerations.
One primary risk is data privacy and security.
Integrating AI deeply into operational processes means giving it access to sensitive information.
Enterprises must be vigilant about how this data is used, stored, and protected.
Smartsheet addresses this by anchoring AI securely in customer data and through the planned Smart Hub, which, according to Smartsheet, allows organizations to define AI interaction with their data.
This provides a crucial layer of control.
Another trade-off is the potential for over-reliance on AI.
While Smart Agents are designed to augment human intelligence, there is a risk that teams might delegate critical thinking or complex problem-solving entirely to the AI, leading to a degradation of human skills or a failure to spot nuances that only human insight can provide.
Mitigation involves continuous training, fostering a culture of critical engagement with AI outputs, and emphasizing AI as a co-pilot, not an autopilot.
Finally, the ethical considerations of AI are paramount.
Questions around bias in data used for training, the explainability of AI decisions, and the impact on human roles must be continuously addressed.
Smartsheet’s approach, with its focus on user-controlled data and a central governance platform like Smart Hub, points toward a more responsible AI framework.
For IT decision-makers, emphasizing this responsible AI framework will be key to successful adoption.
Tools, Metrics, and Cadence: Measuring Intelligent Impact
To truly realize the benefits of an AI agent platform, organizations need the right tools to measure its impact and a consistent cadence for review.
Smartsheet’s new capabilities provide a robust foundation, including:
- the Knowledge Graph for contextual data;
- Smart Assist for conversational AI design;
- Smart Flows for plain-language workflow creation;
- Smart Columns for AI-powered data categorization;
- Smart Agents like the Project Manager Agent for proactive process optimization;
- the forthcoming Smart Hub for AI governance.
Additionally, features like Scenario Planning, unified Portfolios, and an enhanced Security Score further empower comprehensive work management.
For COOs and CFOs, value is measured in efficiency and velocity.
Key Performance Indicators to track include:
- Project Completion Rate (on-time and on-budget);
- Resource Utilization Rate to identify allocation effectiveness;
- Time-to-Decision, quantifying the speed of critical insights.
Additionally, organizations should measure Workflow Automation ROI to calculate cost savings and develop a Strategic Alignment Score to assess how well projects align with overarching goals.
A consistent review cadence is crucial:
- weekly team-level check-ins on AI agent performance;
- monthly departmental reviews focusing on KPI trends and further AI integration;
- and quarterly executive-level strategic reviews to assess overall impact and adjust AI governance policies as needed.
Glossary of Intelligent Work
- AI Agent: a software program designed to reason and act autonomously within specific contexts, augmenting human intelligence.
- Agentic AI: specifically enables systems to take proactive actions and decisions.
- Generative AI: models generate new content like text or code.
- Intelligent Work Management (IWM): describes the operating model leveraging AI to connect people, data, and decisions for intelligent orchestration.
- Knowledge Graph: a dynamic data model representing entities and their relationships, providing context for AI.
- Smart Hub: launching in 2026, will serve as a central control center within Smartsheet for managing AI interactions and building custom digital agents.
FAQ: Your Questions About Smartsheet’s New AI Agent Platform
Enterprises often inquire about the nature of an ‘AI agent-first’ platform within Smartsheet.
According to Smartsheet’s 2025 ENGAGE Announcement Report, this means AI agents are foundational to the system, designed to reason, collaborate, and act within specific contexts to augment human intelligence rather than merely automating tasks.
It signifies a move towards proactive intelligence, not just reactive automation.
Regarding data security and compliance, Smartsheet ensures these by anchoring AI securely in customer data and enabling user control.
The Smart Hub, slated for a 2026 launch, will offer central governance, allowing enterprises to define AI’s interaction with their data, monitor usage, and develop custom agents, as described by Smartsheet.
The new AI-powered tools introduced by Smartsheet include Smart Assist for conversational AI in project design and queries, Smart Flows for plain language workflow creation, Smart Columns for automated data categorization and summarization, and Smart Agents such as the Project Manager Agent, as detailed in the announcement report.
For IT decision-makers, Smartsheet’s approach is critical because its unified AI architecture offers the control, transparency, and integration needed to embed intelligence into core operational processes without introducing undue risk.
The planned Smart Hub, in particular, empowers IT with governance over AI interactions and data.
Conclusion: The Dawn of Enterprise Cognition
The quiet hum of Maya’s laptop no longer signals the endless churn of disconnected tasks.
Instead, it is the soft whisper of an enterprise thinking, learning, and acting as one.
Smartsheet’s AI agent platform is not just another tool; it is an operating model that reimagines how work gets done.
It moves us beyond mere efficiency to a state of enterprise cognition – where strategy is not just planned, it is intelligently orchestrated into reality.
This is not about the technology alone; it is about the human experience it enables: less frustration, more clarity, and the unprecedented ability to bridge the great divide between vision and execution.
The true measure of digital transformation is fundamentally about how intelligently work adapts.
The next great competitive differentiator will not be efficiency, but this newfound enterprise cognition.
Explore how Smartsheet’s new AI agent platform can transform your organization’s ability to execute with unprecedented speed and precision.
“`
Article start from Hers……
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Bridging the Great Divide: How Smartsheet’s New AI Agents Orchestrate Enterprise Strategy to Reality
Maya, a seasoned COO with a global tech firm, often found herself staring at her desk, its surface gleaming under the sharp office lights.
It was not the pile of reports that weighed her down; it was the gnawing sense that her meticulously crafted strategies were often lost in translation on their journey to execution.
She saw countless projects, each with its own budget, timeline, and team, sprawling across a dozen different tools, each speaking a different digital language.
The irony was not lost on her: in an age of hyper-connectivity, the enterprise still felt like a collection of brilliant minds working in silos, missing the grand orchestra.
This quiet frustration, the chasm between ambition and day-to-day reality, is precisely the problem the next wave of intelligent work management seeks to solve.
Smartsheet recently unveiled an AI agent-first platform at its 2025 ENGAGE conference, designed to revolutionize how enterprises manage work.
By leveraging generative and agentic AI, this platform aims to seamlessly connect strategy with execution, enhancing productivity and collaboration across the entire organization.
Why This Matters Now: The Unseen Costs of Disconnected Work
Maya’s experience is not unique; it is a widespread challenge.
Many leaders grapple with the struggle to bridge strategy and execution, often leading to siloed data and reactive decision-making.
Despite significant investments in digital tools, the sheer complexity of modern enterprises means that vision often dissipates into a fog of fragmented workflows and misaligned efforts.
We have automated tasks, yes, but we have not yet mastered intelligent orchestration – the ability to make every part of the business work in concert, understanding the ‘why’ behind each action.
This challenge is particularly acute in large organizations.
According to Smartsheet’s 2025 ENGAGE Announcement Report, 85 percent of Fortune 500 companies already utilize Smartsheet to manage projects, budgets, and strategic execution.
This statistic underscores a critical need: if even the most sophisticated companies rely on platforms like Smartsheet, the demand for more intelligent, interconnected work solutions is immense and growing.
The future is not just about doing work faster; it is about thinking and adapting faster.
The Execution Gap: When Strategy Gets Lost in the Weeds
The core problem, as many a C-suite executive will attest, is the execution gap.
We craft elegant strategies in boardrooms, full of grand visions and ambitious targets.
But then these strategies are handed down, dissected, and often reassembled into a mosaic of departmental tasks that bear little resemblance to the original masterpiece.
It is like designing a magnificent symphony only for each musician to play their part in isolation, without hearing the others.
The whole becomes less than the sum of its parts.
A common pitfall is that increased automation, while boosting efficiency in specific areas, can inadvertently amplify this disconnect if not orchestrated intelligently.
An accounting department automates invoicing, an HR department automates onboarding, a marketing team automates campaigns—all highly efficient in their own right.
But without a unified, intelligent layer to connect these automated streams, the enterprise still operates in a series of optimized but uncoordinated sprints, rather than a cohesive marathon.
The counterintuitive insight here is that simply automating more tasks does not guarantee strategic alignment; sometimes, it just automates silos deeper.
The Global Product Launch That Missed Its Mark
Imagine a global product launch.
The marketing team crafts a brilliant campaign, the engineering team hits its release deadline, and sales teams are prepped with new materials.
Yet, the launch falters.
Why?
The regional legal teams are still reviewing compliance documents, manufacturing delays in one geography were not communicated effectively to sales in another, and the customer support portal was not updated with the new product FAQs until days after launch.
Each team worked diligently, but without an intelligent, unifying system, critical interdependencies were missed.
The vision of a synchronized global debut dissolved into a series of staggered, reactive patches.
This is not a failure of effort; it is a failure of intelligent orchestration.
What the Research Really Says: Smartsheet’s AI Agent Revolution
The unveiling of Smartsheet’s new AI agent platform at its 2025 ENGAGE conference marks a pivotal moment, shifting the focus from mere automation to intelligent orchestration.
The platform is designed to align people, data, and decisions under a single, intelligent layer, as per Smartsheet’s 2025 ENGAGE Announcement Report.
This is not just an upgrade; it is a foundational rethink of how work flows within an enterprise.
The platform marks a pivotal shift from mere automation to intelligent orchestration.
While most enterprises have automated routine work, the next frontier is intelligent orchestration, meaning AI that not only executes tasks but understands their underlying purpose.
This represents a monumental shift for tech buyers, moving from reactive task management to proactive outcome management.
The practical implication is a future where AI anticipates needs and potential roadblocks, rather than merely reporting on them.
Central to this transformation is Smartsheet’s new Knowledge Graph.
This dynamic data model, acting as the platform’s brain, links people, projects, and data across the entire enterprise, according to Smartsheet’s 2025 ENGAGE Announcement Report.
This powerful enterprise nervous system transforms disparate data points into contextualized insights, creating a unified operational fabric where AI intelligently orchestrates work.
On the topic of collaborative AI augmenting human intelligence, Rajeev Singh, CEO of Smartsheet, has stated that Intelligent Work Management serves as the operating model for modern enterprises.
He noted that Smartsheet provides collaborative AI, secured by customer data, and designed to enhance human intelligence, thereby initiating a new era of work that allows teams to perform with increased speed and accuracy.
This highlights a clear moral core: AI is not replacing human judgment but amplifying it.
The practical implication for leaders is a workforce empowered by AI, not displaced, leading to greater innovation and faster strategic adaptation.
For tech buyers concerned about transparency and compliance, Smartsheet is also introducing Smart Hub, launching in 2026.
This central control center will allow enterprises to define how AI interacts with their data, monitor usage, and even build custom digital agents, according to Smartsheet.
This offers a notable shift toward responsible and explainable AI, providing a trusted pathway to AI adoption where CIOs and COOs can maintain oversight and ensure data security without compromising agility.
Playbook You Can Use Today: Orchestrating Intelligent Work
Adopting an intelligent work management platform like Smartsheet’s new AI agent platform is a strategic evolution, not an overnight switch.
Leaders should begin by auditing existing work management tools and identifying significant friction points where strategy disconnects from execution, pinpointing information black holes or consistent project stalls.
Next, define clear, measurable AI-ready outcomes, such as accelerating project delivery by a specific percentage or improving resource allocation.
Instead of implementing AI for its own sake, focus on these tangible business outcomes.
Start small by piloting with a high-impact, low-risk project, critical enough to demonstrate value but contained enough to manage initial challenges.
This could be a new product development cycle or a complex marketing campaign.
Leverage conversational AI tools like Smart Assist to help design new projects or configure automations.
This dramatically reduces setup time and embeds best practices from the start, essentially providing an expert project designer on call 24/7.
Empower teams with Smart Flows for workflow creation by encouraging them to build multi-step automations using plain language.
This democratizes workflow creation, allowing those closest to the work to optimize it without needing deep technical expertise.
Integrate Smart Agents, such as the Project Manager Agent, to continuously monitor progress, identify risks, and recommend optimizations.
This shifts project management from reactive problem-solving to proactive risk mitigation and timeline optimization, as detailed by Smartsheet’s 2025 ENGAGE Announcement Report.
As you scale, plan for governance with Smart Hub by defining how AI interacts with your data, monitoring usage, and building custom agents.
This ensures your AI deployment is responsible, transparent, and aligned with organizational policies.
Risks, Trade-offs, and Ethics: Navigating the AI Frontier
The promise of AI agents is immense, but so are the responsibilities.
Adopting an advanced platform like Smartsheet’s comes with its own set of considerations.
One primary risk is data privacy and security.
Integrating AI deeply into operational processes means giving it access to sensitive information.
Enterprises must be vigilant about how this data is used, stored, and protected.
Smartsheet addresses this by anchoring AI securely in customer data and through the planned Smart Hub, which, according to Smartsheet, allows organizations to define AI interaction with their data.
This provides a crucial layer of control.
Another trade-off is the potential for over-reliance on AI.
While Smart Agents are designed to augment human intelligence, there is a risk that teams might delegate critical thinking or complex problem-solving entirely to the AI, leading to a degradation of human skills or a failure to spot nuances that only human insight can provide.
Mitigation involves continuous training, fostering a culture of critical engagement with AI outputs, and emphasizing AI as a co-pilot, not an autopilot.
Finally, the ethical considerations of AI are paramount.
Questions around bias in data used for training, the explainability of AI decisions, and the impact on human roles must be continuously addressed.
Smartsheet’s approach, with its focus on user-controlled data and a central governance platform like Smart Hub, points toward a more responsible AI framework.
For IT decision-makers, emphasizing this responsible AI framework will be key to successful adoption.
Tools, Metrics, and Cadence: Measuring Intelligent Impact
To truly realize the benefits of an AI agent platform, organizations need the right tools to measure its impact and a consistent cadence for review.
Smartsheet’s new capabilities provide a robust foundation, including:
- the Knowledge Graph for contextual data;
- Smart Assist for conversational AI design;
- Smart Flows for plain-language workflow creation;
- Smart Columns for AI-powered data categorization;
- Smart Agents like the Project Manager Agent for proactive process optimization;
- the forthcoming Smart Hub for AI governance.
Additionally, features like Scenario Planning, unified Portfolios, and an enhanced Security Score further empower comprehensive work management.
For COOs and CFOs, value is measured in efficiency and velocity.
Key Performance Indicators to track include:
- Project Completion Rate (on-time and on-budget);
- Resource Utilization Rate to identify allocation effectiveness;
- Time-to-Decision, quantifying the speed of critical insights.
Additionally, organizations should measure Workflow Automation ROI to calculate cost savings and develop a Strategic Alignment Score to assess how well projects align with overarching goals.
A consistent review cadence is crucial:
- weekly team-level check-ins on AI agent performance;
- monthly departmental reviews focusing on KPI trends and further AI integration;
- and quarterly executive-level strategic reviews to assess overall impact and adjust AI governance policies as needed.
Glossary of Intelligent Work
- AI Agent: a software program designed to reason and act autonomously within specific contexts, augmenting human intelligence.
- Agentic AI: specifically enables systems to take proactive actions and decisions.
- Generative AI: models generate new content like text or code.
- Intelligent Work Management (IWM): describes the operating model leveraging AI to connect people, data, and decisions for intelligent orchestration.
- Knowledge Graph: a dynamic data model representing entities and their relationships, providing context for AI.
- Smart Hub: launching in 2026, will serve as a central control center within Smartsheet for managing AI interactions and building custom digital agents.
FAQ: Your Questions About Smartsheet’s New AI Agent Platform
Enterprises often inquire about the nature of an ‘AI agent-first’ platform within Smartsheet.
According to Smartsheet’s 2025 ENGAGE Announcement Report, this means AI agents are foundational to the system, designed to reason, collaborate, and act within specific contexts to augment human intelligence rather than merely automating tasks.
It signifies a move towards proactive intelligence, not just reactive automation.
Regarding data security and compliance, Smartsheet ensures these by anchoring AI securely in customer data and enabling user control.
The Smart Hub, slated for a 2026 launch, will offer central governance, allowing enterprises to define AI’s interaction with their data, monitor usage, and develop custom agents, as described by Smartsheet.
The new AI-powered tools introduced by Smartsheet include Smart Assist for conversational AI in project design and queries, Smart Flows for plain language workflow creation, Smart Columns for automated data categorization and summarization, and Smart Agents such as the Project Manager Agent, as detailed in the announcement report.
For IT decision-makers, Smartsheet’s approach is critical because its unified AI architecture offers the control, transparency, and integration needed to embed intelligence into core operational processes without introducing undue risk.
The planned Smart Hub, in particular, empowers IT with governance over AI interactions and data.
Conclusion: The Dawn of Enterprise Cognition
The quiet hum of Maya’s laptop no longer signals the endless churn of disconnected tasks.
Instead, it is the soft whisper of an enterprise thinking, learning, and acting as one.
Smartsheet’s AI agent platform is not just another tool; it is an operating model that reimagines how work gets done.
It moves us beyond mere efficiency to a state of enterprise cognition – where strategy is not just planned, it is intelligently orchestrated into reality.
This is not about the technology alone; it is about the human experience it enables: less frustration, more clarity, and the unprecedented ability to bridge the great divide between vision and execution.
The true measure of digital transformation is fundamentally about how intelligently work adapts.
The next great competitive differentiator will not be efficiency, but this newfound enterprise cognition.
Explore how Smartsheet’s new AI agent platform can transform your organization’s ability to execute with unprecedented speed and precision.
“`
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