AI agents go mainstream, but data integration remains a major hurdle

The news: 93% of IT leaders have already implemented or are planning to implement AI agents within the next two years, per MuleSoft from Salesforce’s 2025 Connectivity Benchmark Report

However, 80% of the enterprise IT leaders surveyed cite data integration or connecting AI agents with existing tools and solutions as major obstacles to adoption.

Why it’s worth watching: Agentic AI can ostensibly be added to enterprise and business workflows to cover employment gaps or streamline rote business processes. The promise of increased efficiency, automation, and productivity is helping push adoption. 

Seventy-one percent of executives at organizations exploring generative AI (genAI) agree that AI agents will help drive higher levels of automation in their workforce, per Capgemini.

Hurdles to AI agent adoption: Enterprises are struggling with AI delivery—80% of respondents cite data integration as the key challenge, and 29% of AI agent expansion projects missed deadlines in 2024.

Enterprises use an average of 897 apps to run their businesses, per Salesforce, but only 29% of these business applications are connected to each other.

  • Nearly 40% of IT teams’ time is spent on integrating those apps, diverting resources from innovation.
  • AI agents depend on seamless access to structured and unstructured data across ERP, CRM, and other systems. If data isn’t easily accessible, AI won’t be able to run optimally—it might even result in errors or hallucinations.

Early adopters’ success stories: Companies that have successfully made the leap to AI agents are already seeing positive results.

  • PenFed Credit Union cut resolution times and increased chatbot activity by 223% using AI agents.
  • HR company Adecco used Salesforce’s Agentforce to integrate MuleSoft and Data Cloud to unify data from more than 40 systems. This enabled recruiters to place jobs faster, personalize service at scale, and improve efficiency.

Our take: Enterprises need to overcome the hurdle of integrating data-reliant AI agents into existing tools and processes. Smaller businesses, with fewer applications, could have an easier time adopting AI, but larger enterprises face the hurdle and expense of untangling their technology stack.

This presents an opportunity for AI companies to develop AI agents that integrate more seamlessly into business processes.

This article is part of EMARKETER’s client-only subscription Briefings—daily newsletters authored by industry analysts who are experts in marketing, advertising, media, and tech trends. To help you start 2025 off on the right foot, articles like this one—delivering the latest news and insights—are completely free through January 31, 2025. If you want to learn how to get insights like these delivered to your inbox every day, and get access to our data-driven forecasts, reports, and industry benchmarks, schedule a demo with our sales team.