The Swivel Chair Problem and One Founder’s Bet on AI Agents
A look at how Resolvd is using agentic tech to automate workflows that require a lot of decisions, and what that might mean for operations teams across industries
What’s Inside
One startup founder’s take on the “Swivel Chair Problem”
How AI agents can replace tedious cross-system workflows
What this shift means for analysts, ops teams and the future of work
The swivel chair may be the most overlooked expense in the enterprise, and AI agents are lining up to replace it.
The “Swivel Chair Problem” is what Ananth Manivannan, founder of Resolvd AI, calls the hidden bottleneck slowing down companies everywhere. It’s the person stuck bouncing back-and-forth between systems just to resolve a single operational request.
“We’ve thrown SaaS and RPA at this problem for years,” Manivannan told me in a recent interview. “But it’s still the human in the swivel chair holding everything together.”
The Hidden Cost of Manual Input
He’s seen it firsthand. At companies like Capital One and PepsiCo, Manivannan said he watched as analysts received unstructured requests — such as a spreadsheet, a contract or an email — and then spent hours toggling between systems, reconciling context and manually updating records.
Here’s another example Manivannan discussed. Imagine an analyst at a hospital receives a blurry photo of a medical stent via email. The staffer needs to figure out the SKU, compare it against three different contracts, and then inputs it into the right system. It’s not a simple rule-based task. It’s more like a research project, Manivannan said.
This is what he calls the “Swivel Chair Problem.” Enterprises spend millions of dollars on software from Workday and Salesforce, but the connection between the systems is often a person in a swivel chair who bridges the gaps between systems by hand. AI agents replace that chair with a direct data pipeline.
And in healthcare, where labor shortages are a daily reality, that kind of automation isn’t just helpful. It’s necessary.
“Nurses should get to do what they do best, not be bogged down by administrative follow-through,” he said, adding that AI agents can offload tedious coordination tasks, giving humans back time and focus.
Resolvd’s Approach to Agentic Workflows
Manivannan said that Resolvd AI is designed to eliminate that kind of work. The shift from repetitive task to cognitive process isn’t just changing workflows. It’s changing how companies are built.
Resolvd’s platform’s agents:
🔶 Understand the intent behind unstructured inputs
🔶 Orchestrate and reconcile information across contracts, systems and teams
🔶 Execute updates directly in platforms like Workday, SAP, PeopleSoft and ServiceNow
If RPA automated tasks, Resolvd is trying to automate the glue, the cognitive coordination layer that connects tasks, systems and decisions.
It’s not about replacing analysts. “We want to elevate them,” Manivannan said. “Your best people shouldn’t be doing swivel-chair work. They should be orchestrating systems.”
A New Role for Analysts
Still, the speed of adoption raises familiar questions about de-skilling and the overreliance on agentic tech, especially when judgment-heavy tasks get shifted to AI systems.
Resolvd is currently working with healthcare and IT organizations to automate item master clean-up, contract reconciliation and other sticky processes that have resisted traditional automation. Manivannan considers these deployments a starting point, especially in sectors like healthcare that are dealing with labor shortages and where operational efficiency is a necessity.
The swivel chair isn’t just a metaphor. It’s a productivity sink, a hiring workaround, and increasingly, a target for AI deployment. As companies try to scale efficiently and deal with labor shortages, the swivel chair is becoming a symbol of what needs to change.
Help Me Explore This Further
This story is part of a larger series I’m working on about AI agents and how they impact people and the future of work inside startups, enterprises and beyond. Resolvd is one example. But the stories I’ve uncovered span operations, leadership, culture and policy.
I’m especially interested in hearing from academics, researchers, and thought leaders who are studying these shifts, as well as founders, operators and investors with firsthand experience.
If you have ideas or someone I should talk to, drop me a note or email. Always open to sharp insights and fresh perspectives.