Working On Data Instead of With Data
Think about how you’ve used AI in the past. You’ve given it a prompt, a paragraph, meeting notes, etc. All pretty simple tasks that are individualistic. AI agents don’t do this. They operate across systems and are capable of doing much deeper work. You’re looking at having the ability to retrieve information, update it, validate it, and then pass it off to the next step in your workflow. It’s much different.
This means that if your data is messy, your AI will be messy. If your data is siloed, your AI will be siloed. If your data is untrustworthy, your AI outputs will be untrustworthy. It will follow your lead.
AI is a wonderful tool, but it is not yet at the point where it is fully autonomous, and it likely never will be. It learns from you. Therefore, it is up to you to ensure that your AI is being fed good data.
The key takeaway is that your AI agents will only be as good as your data. You can’t expect magical AI solutions if your data isn’t ready to handle them.
What Does Data-Ready Mean?
What I’ll start off by telling you is this: Data readiness does not mean you have lots of data. This is a common misconception.
AI agents need the following from data:
Clean, governed, and consistent data – Agents rely on patterns. Data gaps or data duplicates are going to skew and break those patterns. Remember: AI’s standards will follow your standards.
Integrated systems – Your tools must talk to each other. There is a high level of sophistication with AI agents, and your tools need to reflect this.
Clear process logic – Agents need to know what happens first, what triggers a decision, what the next steps are, etc. You can’t be vague. The vaguer you are, the more unpredictable your results will be.
Accessible and secure data infrastructure – You need to make sure you are controlling access. Make sure permissions are structured, that you have audit trails, and always have guardrails that protect your business.
This Matters Because?
Autonomous agents work end to end, which is very different from how we’ve been using AI in the past. Of course, you should still use them to compress your work, but now you can use them in much deeper ways.
They are able to process invoices, update CRM records, reconcile data, run customer workflows, etc. It has come a long way from simply being used to summarize meetings. But to realize success, you need to make sure your data foundations are solid.
How Can I Win?
The companies who will win are the ones who are going to come into this prepared and ready to go. AI always requires a strategy. Always.
I’m going to give you two scenarios, and you guess which one will be successful.
Company A treats AI like a feature and continues to add AI tools onto broken processes.
Company B treats AI like an operating model and redesigns data flows, systems, and governance.
Pretty obvious which one is going to be more successful. The more prepared you are, the more likely you will be to win.
Why AI Agents Will Benefit Your Organization
AI agents will not replace teams. They will simply take on the work humans shouldn’t be doing and allow them to innovate in other areas. Humans are creative. Humans are smart. Humans are innovation drivers. AI will allow you to use them in all the ways they matter most by eliminating or compressing certain tasks.
Make sure your team can realize success by ensuring your data is ready for AI agents to use. Reach out to us!
