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AI is here—but is your data ready?

Digital transformation concept. System engineering. Binary code. Programming.
May 29, 2025 Abhi Visuvasam

The rapid acceleration of AI innovation presents a challenge for many organizations. Some are actively addressing this shift, while others lack direction, and there are those choosing to delay their response.

But no matter where your business stands, one fact is clear: AI-ready data is the holy grail of modern innovation.

Every AI journey begins with bold ambitions. But reality often looks like this: teams start small and stay small. Projects stay stuck in pilot mode or remain locked in isolated experiments. Consider the last time you used a chatbot that began with a disclaimer like, “I’m here to help with information, but I’m not a substitute for expert guidance.” or  “I strive for accuracy, but I can make mistakes—please verify important details.”  That’s a clear sign of untrusted, siloed data limiting AI’s potential.

This happens because businesses can’t fully trust AI outputs without high-quality, reliable data inputs. As a result, they fence off AI in controlled environments—safe but small. Innovation is stifled, adoption is sacrificed, and scale is never achieved.

AI projects shouldn’t—and realistically can’t—be single-threaded. AI thrives on broad context, integrating insights across systems and teams. Yet many enterprises remain trapped in narrow use cases, unable to scale. Why? Because the foundational data isn’t ready.

Simply put, if your data isn’t AI-ready, your AI can’t move beyond experimentation.

Defining AI-ready data

At Reltio, we define AI-ready data as secure, cleansed, enriched, unified, and trustworthy data about your business’s most critical entities. It must be instantly accessible for both real-time operations and in-depth analytics.

That means your customer records aren’t duplicated across departments. Your product information isn’t scattered in outdated systems. Your supplier, location, asset, and relationship data are clean, up-to-date, and consistently accurate.

Take a global retailer, for example. Without unified customer and product data, personalization efforts fall flat, leading to irrelevant recommendations and lost revenue. With unified data, those same efforts become intelligent, timely, and effective.

Data unification to the rescue

This is where modern data unification platforms like Reltio come in. Originally introduced as master data management (MDM) a few decades ago, these platforms have drastically evolved to meet today’s enterprise demands. Cloud-native and real-time, they now unify not just core entities, but also interactions, transactions, and relationships. The latest evolution is the Intelligent Data Graph: connecting and contextualizing data so it becomes usable by AI, fueling intelligent, enterprise-wide experiences and agentic AI capabilities across your enterprise.

Before AI was mainstream, analytics and BI teams understood this truth: garbage in, garbage out. Trusted insights depend entirely on trusted data. That hasn’t changed. What’s changed is the speed and the stakes involved.

AI systems require the same trust we demand of human decision-makers. But they also require data that’s always fresh, always available, and always contextual.

Speed is the new differentiator. Companies need unified data that can instantly fuel real-time interactions, proactive service response, and rapid decision-making. That’s not possible with legacy systems or fragmented architectures.

Modern data unification platforms like Reltio make this seamless. They continuously clean, enrich, and unify enterprise data so organizations can power AI not just in experiments, but in everyday execution.

The truth is, success in AI isn’t about using the flashiest tools or new technology. It’s about readiness. Data readiness. Without it, even the best AI model is like a high-performance car with no fuel. It’s pretty, but it’s going nowhere fast.

AI is accelerating, and the winners will be the ones who don’t let bad data slow them down.

Don’t let untrusted data be your bottleneck

AI won’t wait—and neither will your competitors. The organizations that win in the AI era will be the ones that treat data not just as an asset, but as the foundation. Unified, real-time, AI-ready data isn’t a future state—it’s a current necessity.

With a modern platform powering trusted data across the enterprise, you’ll go beyond pilots. You’ll unlock personalized experiences, intelligent workflows, and faster, smarter decisions.

Your AI journey is only as strong as the data that fuels it. Get the foundation right—and watch what’s possible.

Abhi

Abhi Visuvasam is the Field CTO of Enterprise Architecture and Solutions at Reltio, bringing more than 30 years of experience at the intersection of business and technology. He helps enterprises navigate complex digital transformation journeys, with a strong focus on data management, architecture, and customer value. Before joining Reltio, Abhi served as Emerging Platforms & Digital Portals Practice Leader at Accenture, where he led SaaS and solution architecture initiatives, helping clients modernize their platforms and embrace next-generation technologies. Prior to that, he spent over 17 years at IBM, most recently as Associate Partner and Chief Architect, where he specialized in digital transformation, microservices, API enablement, and cloud infrastructure modernization. Abhi’s career includes a decade of delivering technology projects, followed by ten years in architecture roles spanning application, integration, infrastructure, and enterprise disciplines. In the past eight years, he has held revenue-generating roles in pre-sales consulting, sales, and customer success. His well-rounded background gives him a rare perspective on aligning technology to business outcomes—insight that has proven invaluable to his employers and, more importantly, to his customers.