The easy version of "adopt an agent network" is a demo on a laptop. The hard version is the one that pays: getting that network approved, piloted and scaled inside a big, conservative company that has a lot to lose.
Picture the archetype. A vertically integrated manufacturer-retailer: its own factories, its own warehouses and trucks, its own stores, its own contact centre. The IT estate is mature but heavy — an ERP at the core, a patchwork of line-of-business systems around it, home-grown glue holding the seams together. There is a security function with veto power, a procurement function that owns the contract, and a culture whose first instinct is "prove this won't break sales during peak season."
This is a playbook for that company. Not the marketing pitch — the actual sequence of questions you get asked, in the order you get asked them, and the honest answer to each. I'll keep the vendor's claims, the things I verified in a build, and the things that are spec-only strictly separate, because in a room like this, blurring them is how you lose the room.
