As organizations increasingly adopt agentic AI, they face a significant challenge: providing these agents with trustworthy data to drive decision-making and action. With the potential to transform work, AI agents require seamless access to enterprise data, but legacy systems often hinder this process.
The shift towards agentic AI places substantial demands on enterprise data systems, necessitating access to both structured and unstructured data across the organization. However, many companies struggle to meet these demands due to outdated data systems. According to a recent survey of 300 data and technology executives, the average organization only provides AI agents with access to 45% of company data.
Overcoming Legacy System Limitations
A select group of organizations, deemed ‘data leaders,’ have achieved greater success with agentic AI by ensuring access to over 70% of their data. These leaders demonstrate that trustworthy data is crucial for reliable AI, with 100% of them trusting the decisions made by their AI agents. In contrast, only around half of the surveyed organizations trust their agents’ decisions.
The survey also reveals that data leaders face fewer constraints when scaling AI agents, with only 8% reporting limitations due to legacy data systems. This is in stark contrast to ‘data laggards,’ where two-thirds report that legacy systems limit AI agent scaling and prevent agents from making decisions at speed.
Prioritizing Data Access and Governance
To enable the widespread adoption of agentic AI, organizations must prioritize improving access to structured and unstructured data for AI agents. Enhancing data and AI governance with business context is also essential. The survey found that data leaders are focusing heavily on automating data management to achieve these goals.
As organizations strive to harness the power of agentic AI, it is clear that providing trustworthy data is crucial for success. By overcoming legacy system limitations and prioritizing data access and governance, companies can unlock the full potential of AI agents and drive transformative change.
