Who Governs the Agents?

This IDC Market Perspective argues that agentic AI is arriving in supply chain technology with real momentum and real demand behind it. The benefits - removing tedium, compressing expert analysis, and monitoring continuously for risk - are quickly becoming table stakes rather than differentiators. What will separate organizations is not access to agents but the discipline to govern them. This document frames that discipline as an interdependent triad: business governance to aim agents at high-value work, technical governance to contain them with architecture and guardrails, and procurement/spend governance to fund them within sensible economic boundaries. Because no single function can govern agentic AI alone, the three must operate as one connected model."Agentic AI's promise in the supply chain is no longer the hard part - the technology is real, and the demand is genuine. The hard part, and the real differentiator, is governance: aiming agents at work that matters, containing them with the right guardrails and decision rights, and funding them within boundaries that reflect where value actually lives. Treat business, technical, and spend governance as one connected discipline, and the agents earn their keep. Treat them separately, and you risk automating the wrong things - quickly and expensively." - Eric Thompson, research director, Worldwide Supply Chain Planning, IDC