🧩 Why Agentic AI isn’t “click-to-insight” yet (and how to fix that. Fast)
The AI genie’s out of the bottle. Now what?
Everyone’s talking about Agentic AI, Gen AI, and the latest updates for the most popular models. But if you’re leading data or AI at a large company, talking isn’t the problem.
The problem is execution.
→ How do you actually make it work across people, processes, and governance?
→ How do you scale beyond the pilot phase (without scaling bad decisions, too)?
→ And how do you build trust with execs and business users who are more skeptical than ever?
This month’s newsletter is all about breaking down what it really takes to move from proof-of-concept to production - without losing trust (or your sanity).
Make Agentic Self-Service Work for Real Humans
We keep hearing this same thing in conversations with data leaders: “Yes, we know Agentic/ Generative AI is big. We just don’t know how to use it the right way for our org.”
There’s a reason for that. Most organizations are trying to layer GenAI on top of old habits. Old governance. Old tooling. And that simply doesn’t work.
What does - you wonder?
We wrote the ultimate guide for people who’ve been through the cycle of “big promise, low adoption” before and don’t want to go through it again.
This guide doesn’t try to sell you on hype. It gets into the real stuff: what it actually takes to make Agentic and GenAI self-service work in the enterprise.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
How to think about the different user personas in your org and what GenAI might mean for them
What training needs to look like - not just once, but continuously
Why governance cannot be an afterthought (and what to do instead)
How to measure value in a way that makes sense to your execs
Most importantly, you’ll discover how to move from PoCs to scalable and sustainable AI implementations that drive business value.
So, if you’re planning your Agentic AI strategy this year (or trying to clean up the one you have already started), give this a read.
Fix Self-Service Analytics Before AI Makes It Worse
Self-service analytics is broken.
Companies throw dashboards at discouraged business users and call it empowerment. They connect AI models to siloed, conflicting data and call it innovation. They give employees the means to explore data but not the confidence to trust it.
Numbers without context lead to bad decisions. Access without governance leads to chaos. Self-service without explainability leads to confusion.
True self-service analytics works like a trusted advisor. It doesn’t merely spit out numbers. It shows you where they came from, how they were calculated, and what they mean.
It keeps definitions aligned, governance intact, and responses hallucination-free.
And agentic and generative AI make this more critical than ever. Get it right, and you unlock real intelligence. Get it wrong, and you scale bad decisions at the speed of AI.
CDO Magazine just published our take on how to make it work. Read it here.
Keep GenAI and Agents Trustworthy with illumex + NVIDIA
We’ve hit the “agents everywhere” stage. But here’s the thing most demos still avoid: What happens when the agent gives you the wrong answer?
Or worse, when it gives you a plausible-sounding wrong answer?
The fix isn’t prompt engineering. Not safety rails either. It’s context.
The kind that can only come from your actual business data: semantically coherent, mapped to your unique business logic, and grounded in how the people in your company actually work.
Find out how illumex leverages NVIDIA to build that context layer and why it matters way more than whatever type of model you’ve got plugged in.
Learn why things like usage logs, business logic, and org-specific ontologies are vital to make sure that when the AI speaks, it’s not just technically accurate - it’s contextually relevant and fully explainable.
That last part is key.
Because if users don’t understand how the AI got the answer, they’ll never trust it. And if they don’t trust it, they won’t use it.
There’s a great case example in the article about a retailer dealing with a massive ERP migration: 1000s of tables and over a million columns. illumex did much more than "speed it up." It made the whole process understandable to the business team.
That’s what shifts adoption from “nice to have” to “we can’t go back.”
Check it out if your team is stuck between wanting to scale AI and not trusting it enough to do so.
Get Business and Data Teams on the Same Page About AI
Ever seen a CEO ask for tech instead of saying no to it? That’s exactly what happened with generative AI.
For the first time, business leaders weren’t waiting for the tech team to “make a case.” They were walking straight into the data department saying, I want this AI thing - now.
In this podcast with Michael Matias on 20 Minute Leaders, we talk about that big shift, what it means for data teams, and how it’s possible to bridge the messy disconnect between how business users think about data versus how technical teams build it.
This session also covers:
→ The real reason enterprise AI fails → What it means to be AI-ready (spoiler: not what you think)
→ What it takes to create context AI can actually use → What “augmented governance” even is (I promise it’s cooler than it sounds) → And why humans need to stay in the loop for GenAI to work long-term
If you’re leading data or AI at a large company or just trying to get more out of what you’ve already built, tune in. Might help you skip a few of the growing pains.
Get Real with Agentic and GenAI ROI
Enterprise AI implementations don’t fail because of the model. They fail because of the data.
Join a Live Webinar with experts from Siemens, illumex, and D2A2 for real talk on turning Agentic and GenAI hype into real ROI.
Time: 24th April, 11am - 12 noon ET.
Platform: LinkedIn Live + Streamyard
🎯 What’s covered:
▸ Why structured data is the real GenAI blocker
▸ Where traditional governance breaks down
▸ Spotting and fixing model bias
▸ Does strong governance = business edge?
▸ Case studies that show what’s actually working in the real world
🧠 Real leaders. Real insights. Real value.
🎟️Limited spots available! → Save yours now.
Join Us at ARMA InfoNext 2025
Join us at ARMA InfoNEXT 2025 in Savannah, GA, where we’ll be sharing insights every leader needs to hear about Governance and Generative AI.
Learn how AI is reshaping information governance, the risks and opportunities it brings, and the strategies you need to ensure data integrity.
Find out how to navigate regulatory challenges and leverage AI to make smarter decisions that drive business advantage.
Unlock Your Free Archive of Resources
Missed it? No worries.
Access all free ebooks and guides from past newsletters here:
Case study: TEVA Digital Health
Case study: Transforming Data Migration with GenAI
Workflow Overview: Augmented Governance
Stay Tuned!
We’re not done peeling back the layers on Agentic and GenAI just yet. Next month, we’ll unpack the stuff under the hood: agentic analytics, AI governance, coherent semantics, and more. The real ingredients behind trustworthy AI implementations (with zero artificial flavoring).
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