Business leaders have a data crisis of confidence at the worst possible time. Here come the agents to help, but what future now for traditional data analysts?

One welcome truism that has emerged consistently from the more extravagant claims AI hype cycle of the past 18 months is an acknowledgment of the pragmatic reality that success is built on a solid data foundation. Without good data, AI - traditional, generative, agentic - won’t deliver on its potential. That being so, it’s unfortunate then that business confidence and trust in the quality of organizational data appears to be on the decline.

Or at least that’s one of the headline findings of new research from Salesforce among 500 US business leaders, across multiple job titles, which reports that less than half of those polled believe that their data strategies fully align with their business priorities, a sharp decline since 2023 when Salesforce published its State of Data and Analytics report. Confidence in data’s relevance to business objectives is down 18%, and confidence in its accuracy is down ...