Watch How Agentic AI Transforms Retail with a Master Data Foundation
Video Summary
In this highlight from Breaking Down Retail Silos: Building the AI-Ready Enterprise, Lori Schafer explains how Agentic AI changes the game for retailers. Unlike traditional AI, which only provides insights, Agentic AI executes actions automatically, powered by clean, unified master data.
With governance and golden records in place, retailers can safely let AI agents manage processes, reduce manual work, and scale intelligence across the enterprise.
Key Takeaways
Agentic AI moves beyond insights to execution, automating end-to-end processes
Governance rules are essential to ensure safe and accurate automation
Clean, unified master data is the foundation—bad data equals bad AI
Retailers already experimenting with Agentic AI can gradually shift manual tasks to AI agents
Golden records create a single source of truth for products, pricing, and customer data
Video Transcript
Gary Hawkins: Can you share your thoughts on how Agentic AI is being applied to a master data foundation, how it changes the game, and how it differs from what most people think of as AI?
Lori Schafer: Absolutely. Traditional AI has mostly been about providing insights and recommendations. Agentic AI goes further—it can actually execute actions automatically. With the right governance and rules in place, AI can run entire processes without human intervention.
That’s the real shift: going from knowing to doing. The AI doesn’t just advise—it does the work. But first, you need to get your data right. If you have bad data, you’ll have bad AI. That means unifying your data and creating golden records in master data so everything ties back to one source of truth.
Once that foundation is in place, you can start to apply generative AI and, more importantly, Agentic AI to make real business decisions. Companies are already experimenting with this today. Start small, get the basics right, and as you gain confidence, you can let AI agents take over more manual tasks.