I've had similar problems before, you might want to try using the File:Spec module. So:

 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use File::Spec;
my $prog = File::Spec->catfile('program files', 'agent', 'agent.bat');
system($prog);
[download]

Also perl generally doesn't like paths that have spaces so you might want to try quoting the path and then running it again.

-Hokie
all code is untested