Enterprises in Asia Pacific report stronger governance over AI agents than their counterparts in Europe and North America, even as a new global study finds most organisations remain confident about keeping pace with AI deployment but unprepared to manage conflicts between agents in production.

The report, Engineering Business Outcomes: The Shift to Agentic Systems, was released by OutSystems in collaboration with CIO Dive and KPMG, based on a survey of 858 executives globally, including 209 respondents across Australia, India and Japan.

A gap between confidence and readiness

Globally, 82 per cent of executives believe their organisations can keep pace with governing, integrating and monitoring AI agents as they move into production. However, only 26 per cent say they are well prepared to resolve conflicts across agents, systems and automated workflows.

“82% of executives say they can keep pace with governing AI agents, yet only 26% say they can resolve conflicts between them,” said Tiago Azevedo, CIO of OutSystems. “That gap is where the real work happens. Safety comes from building control into the platform, not reviewing it afterward.”

APAC pulls ahead on governance controls

The regional breakdown found APAC executives report stronger governance readiness than their peers elsewhere: 39 per cent of APAC respondents say they are very well prepared to resolve AI agent conflicts, compared with 29 per cent in Europe and 18 per cent in North America. APAC organisations are also further along in operationalising that governance, with 14 per cent reporting automated controls, audit trails and human review points in place, compared with just 3 per cent in Europe and 2 per cent in North America.

APAC respondents also measure the impact of agentic AI differently from the rest of the world. While error reduction is the most cited measure of agentic AI’s impact globally, at 64 per cent, 73 per cent of APAC respondents instead point to employee productivity, compared with 52 per cent in Europe and 45 per cent in North America.

Across all regions, oversight of AI agents remains largely human-led: 83 per cent of organisations rely on existing IT, security or compliance processes to oversee autonomous agents, while just 5 per cent have automated controls, audit trails and formal human review points in place.