Accounting for almost 90% of enterprise information, unstructured information contains paperwork, movies, photographs, emails, sensor information, and social media content material. Not like structured information neatly saved in databases, unstructured information is tough to prepare and extract insights from. But, it holds the important thing to unlocking deeper buyer understanding, operational efficiencies, and AI-driven innovation.
Nevertheless, most organizations nonetheless battle to combine, analyze, and govern unstructured information successfully. Siloed information stays underutilized, stopping enterprises from maximizing their AI investments. To handle this, Salesforce performed in-depth interviews with 20 CIOs and IT leaders from industries together with know-how, finance, manufacturing, automotive, vitality, and healthcare. Their insights reveal three crucial methods for reworking unstructured information right into a aggressive benefit.
1. Attaining full integration: Making information AI-ready
For CIOs, the last word objective is seamless information integration—structured and unstructured—right into a unified platform that fuels AI and clever brokers. Nevertheless, reaching this requires a well-defined technique, strong governance, and superior AI capabilities.
A CIO from a number one monetary companies firm captured this imaginative and prescient:
In an excellent world, all types of group information ought to be immediately accessible, with out guide processes or dependencies. I ought to simply have the ability to ask AI and generative AI for what I want, and the system ought to ship it.
CIO, Monetary Providers, USA
This imaginative and prescient is not aspirational — it’s attainable in the present day. With Agentforce and Information Cloud’s hybrid search, retrieval-augmented technology (RAG), and vector database capabilities, enterprises can seamlessly join all information sources and floor insights via AI-powered assistants. Think about AI brokers that intelligently retrieve, analyze, and act on information — structured or unstructured — with out guide intervention.
Energy agentic AI with Information Cloud
Information Cloud surfaces crucial buyer context from PDFs, audio information, and movies to Agentforce, making your AI brokers smarter and extra correct.
2. Predictive intelligence: Turning unstructured information into actionable insights
8 out of 10 of enterprise leaders agree that information is crucial for decision-making. But, with out the flexibility to extract insights from unstructured information, organizations danger lacking key alerts—whether or not from buyer suggestions, system logs, or market traits.
For a lot of CIOs, AI’s actual energy lies in predicting and stopping disruptions earlier than they occur. A normal supervisor from a worldwide know-how agency emphasised this:
To save lots of lives. Fingers down, the last word imaginative and prescient is to save lots of lives. To have the ability to get data of holistic information, structured, unstructured, right into a view the place you may predict, is the last word objective for people, I believe. We wanna have the ability to predict to stop.
Normal Supervisor, Expertise, USA
This predictive AI functionality is now a actuality. AI brokers can repeatedly analyze real-time information streams, detect anomalies, and set off automated actions—reworking reactive operations into proactive intelligence.
We’ve entered the agentic AI period when, within the phrases of Ryan Aytay, Tableau CEO, “because of Agentforce, we will have ‘inspector brokers’ which might be at all times on and search for anomalies throughout any enterprise or division. These AI brokers will have the ability to determine points and alternatives throughout any enterprise after which set off prompt actions.”
3. Governance and safety: Managing information and AI with belief and compliance
For CIOs, information safety and governance stay a prime precedence. With out correct controls, unstructured information environments can shortly flip into unmanageable information sprawl, rising dangers and compliance considerations.
A head of Information & Analytics at an vitality firm articulated this problem:
I’ll let you know what my primary characteristic request can be, throughout something unstructured. It’s all safety governance, information retention insurance policies. One of many largest issues, when individuals get entry to plenty of these platforms, is that they devolve so shortly into dumping grounds.
Head of Information & Analytics, Power, Australia
To mitigate these dangers, organizations should implement automated governance frameworks, together with:
- Information classification and tagging to enhance accessibility and compliance
- Coverage-driven encryption & retention to make sure regulatory adherence
- AI-powered entry controls that dynamically alter based mostly on danger elements
Governance and encryption in Information Cloud
Tagging, classification, and encryption can assist you drive dependable agentic AI outcomes. Be taught extra from the specialists with our on-demand webinar.
The way forward for agent-first enterprises begins with unstructured information
Unstructured information is not an untapped useful resource — it’s the muse of AI-powered transformation. By integrating, analyzing, and governing this information successfully, CIOs can:
- Improve AI and automation with real-time insights
- Allow predictive intelligence to drive proactive decision-making
- Guarantee safety and compliance with superior governance options
The suitable information platform — like Salesforce Information Cloud — powers contextually conscious, trusted, autonomous AI brokers that flip unstructured information into an enterprise asset.
