Agentic AI and UDP: the Smartest Way to Business Decision Making

Business decisions today need to tick off a number of boxes. They need to be not only smart and quick, analytical, displaying strategic thinking, while also leading to a cost-efficient, ROI optimising outcome. Concurrently, decision makers are drowning under exponential amounts of data generated. This is adding another layer of complexity as they are required to make sense of it to arrive at best possible decisions. Thankfully, there is a way to deal with this data overload. The solution in sight is in the form of the complementary combination of agentic artificial intelligence (AI) and the unified data platform (UDP). Agentic AI and UDPs together create a system that can power enterprise intelligence and automation.

How Agentic AI Powers the Unified Data Platform

Agentic AI systems work without human intervention by harnessing core capabilities of autonomous data interpretation, decision-making and independent action. For agentic AI to do this, a solid and robust data infrastructure is an imperative. This is where the United Data Platform comes in.The UDP collects data from various sources–platforms,tools,applications etc. across functions such as sales, finance, operations, procurement, HR, in various formats. Next the UDP processes the data by cleaning it up to deliver a single, unified, trusted source of data.This single source of truth(SSoT) further enhanced with additional layers of data quality(DQ) rules provides businesses data that is fit-for-use making it a powerful tool for decision makers. The access to data from this single source, instead of information sourced from siloed sources, provides the Agentic AI fodder to understand the environment and make more informed decisions. Together, the technologies help revolutionise service interactions from being reactive and fragmented the way they are today, to becoming autonomous and intelligent.

Poised to fuel the future

Gartner predicts business automation will handle 80 percent of customer service issues by 2029. The report goes on to predict that by 2029, 80 percent of common customer service issues will be autonomously resolved without human intervention by agentic AI and this will help cut down operational costs by 30 percent. While previous AI models were limited to generating text or summarising interactions, agentic AI possesses the capability to act autonomously to complete tasks, says a recent Gartner report.

UDP and Agentic AI - their Synergistic Strength

Without a UDP, agentic AI gets only limited, fragmented or incomplete data, but with UDP, there is a comprehensive and real-time understanding of the business. As UDP breaks down data silos, it makes things easy for the agentic AI tools to function more effectively and allows it to make better decisions. Imagine a system that doesn't just notify a manager of low inventory—but autonomously orders more stock, reroutes deliveries, and adjusts pricing based on demand trends. That’s the potential of Agentic AI working within a unified data environment. To cite an example, a dip in sales could be caused by a delayed shipment (which comes under operations or due to a pricing error by the finance department). Agentic AI and UDP have the power of tracing, interpreting and acting on this across the system autonomously—without any human inputs.

Decisions are driven by Real-Time Data

UDP delivers real-time data, ensuring that decisions are made on the most current information available. Agentic AI analyses this live data to execute real-time tasks and goal-oriented action automatically. UDP ensures there is quality and consistency in the data that is already available. This is a good foundation for AI to work on. When Agentic AI takes over, it uses this stable foundation to continuously learn, adapt and optimise processes over a period of time. Finally, to sum it all up, UDP can be considered to be the infrastructure. It is like the nervous system that connects each and every part into a whole, while also delivering data. Agentic AI is the digital brain that interprets the data and makes decisions, sometimes even without human input. In tandem, they form an autonomous enterprise nervous system of sorts that has the capability of thinking, learning, and acting in real time.

Why the Shift to Agentic AI and UDP Makes Sense for Modern Businesses

The first reason is the breakdown of siloed information. When data is fragmented, it slows insights, and inefficiencies crop up. Disconnected systems result in missed opportunities and redundant processes. A UDP centralises and standardises data across business units like sales, operations, finance, HR etc. and creates a single chunk of data that represents the whole truth.

The second reason is the shift from automation to autonomy.While earlier processes focused on basic automation, Agentic AI takes it a notch higher. AI agents can autonomously perform tasks like automatically optimizing supply chains, personalising customer experiences and managing IT operations.

The third reason, is the agility, scale and continuous optimisation that can be used from an agentic AI driven UDP. Since the UDP centralises data, agents are able to scale easily across departments and systems, UDP provides complete, clean and current data and Agentic AI uses that data to reason, plan and act in a way that ends up in goals being achieved. AI makes decisions with a full understanding of the business context and there is no guesswork here.

Agentic AI and UDP : a natural convergence

The convergence of Agentic AI and UDP is a fundamental shift in the intelligence of large enterprises. The idea is to move forward from a less efficient system that is rich in data, but poor in terms of insights. But combining Agentic AI and UDP creates a system that can think, decide and act autonomously. Constant human intervention takes up a lot of precious time. Modern businesses, which need to stay afloat and thrive, are better off harnessing the combined power of Agentic AI and UDP that helps businesses stay competitive, agile, and scalable.