What it does
Business agents are staff that work inside your business on their own, on a schedule, and report to you. NETICS has three: the Executive Assistant, the Business Analyst and the Operations Agent. They read what is already in NETICS, such as orders, bookings, invoices, deliveries, approvals, calls and leads, and come back with reports, flags and proposals.
They are kept apart from the agents that talk to your customers. Customer agents live in AI Studio and answer on your website, WhatsApp and phone; business agents never talk to customers at all. Read about customer agents for that side.
Who it is for
Owners and managers who do not have time to check every page every morning. A Lagos shop owner who wants to know which orders are stuck before customers call, a restaurant manager who wants the week's sales against last week's, a logistics company that needs late deliveries raised before lunch. See how this fits retail and e-commerce, restaurants and food and logistics and delivery.
How it works in NETICS
- Open AI > Business agents. Each agent has a card with a "Switch on" switch. Only an owner or admin switches business agents on.
- Set the Schedule: how often, the day for weekly runs, and the time (or the minutes past the hour for hourly runs). The Executive Assistant runs daily or weekly from 07:30, the Business Analyst weekly or daily from 08:00 (Mondays for weekly), and the Operations Agent daily or hourly from 09:00, in your workspace's time zone (Africa/Lagos unless you change it).
- Tick the Duties you want. Each duty has a short description on the card.
- Choose who Reports go to: owners and admins, by Notifications, Email or both.
- Press Run now whenever you want a fresh look. Recent runs show whether each one was scheduled, asked through NETICS or set off by an event, and whether it found anything.
- Read the findings on your Dashboard in the "From your agents" card, under "What your agents found": reports, items marked "Needs you", and proposals marked "Proposed for your OK". Press "Yes, do it" to carry a proposal out, or "Dismiss".
Key capabilities
- Executive Assistant. A morning briefing of what happened since yesterday and what needs you today; an approvals digest with a link to each waiting decision; deadline reminders for invoices, bookings, legal deadlines and pay days due today or tomorrow; and an evening wrap of what got done, off until you tick it.
- Business Analyst. A weekly report of sales, calls, leads and customers against the week before, with the one thing the numbers support doing; alerts when revenue, orders, calls, unanswered calls, refunds or new leads are far from the usual for that weekday; and answers when you ask NETICS about your numbers.
- Operations Agent. Stuck orders, unconfirmed bookings close to their time, late deliveries and requests nobody has touched; overdue invoices nobody has chased, with a reminder proposed for each; stock at its reorder point with a purchase request drafted; and unfinished work, such as drafts left for a day or confirmations that never came, with an offer to have NETICS finish the draft.
- Nothing changes without you. Only three proposals can be approved from an agent: a reminder email for an overdue invoice, a purchase request (which still goes through your own procurement approval), and assigning a stuck request to the staff member with the fewest open ones. The Executive Assistant and the Analyst only report.
- NETICS asks them first. When agents are on, NETICS answers questions in the hub and in NETICS Chat from their latest findings, naming the agent and how old the findings are, and can ask an agent to look again.
- A task is only counted when AI is used. A run that finds nothing to do costs nothing, and each run has a fixed ceiling on how much work it may do.
Plan availability
The Business agents page opens on every plan, so you can see the agents and their duties. Switching them on depends on the plan:
- Free trial, Pay as you go and Starter: no business agents. A card shows a padlock with the plan it comes with, and switching it on opens an upgrade sheet.
- Growth (NGN 200,000 a month): the Business Analyst and the Operations Agent, with 300 agent tasks a month.
- Enterprise: all three, including the Executive Assistant, with 1,500 agent tasks a month.
Agent tasks are pooled across every workspace in a client account. Compare plans on pricing.
Who sees the findings
An agent acts for the person who switched it on or last changed it, with that person's access. If someone else changes its schedule, duties or reports, it acts as them from then on. An agent reads only what that person may open, and every place its findings appear, from the Dashboard card to the notification bell and email, shows each viewer only what they may open. The Business Analyst's duties stop with a note if Analytics is locked for the person it acts for.
Frequently asked questions
Do business agents talk to my customers?
No. They work only inside your business and report to you and your chosen owners and admins. Your customer agents in AI Studio do the talking.
Will an agent send anything without my approval?
No. A reminder to a customer, a purchase request or a reassignment happens only after you press "Yes, do it" on the proposal. Everything else an agent produces is a report or a flag for you to read.
What counts as an agent task?
One run that needed AI. A run that finds nothing to do, or a duty that only checks records without AI, does not use a task. The Business agents page shows how many tasks you have used this month.
Can I ask an agent a question directly?
Yes, through NETICS. Ask "is anything stuck today?" or "how did sales do this week?" and NETICS answers from the right agent's findings, or has it look again.
How are business agents different from automations?
Automations follow steps you design, such as sending a follow-up when a lead arrives. Business agents look across the business on a schedule and tell you what they found, and only act on the three proposals above with your OK.