7 Data Skills Every Enterprise Needs to Win the AI Agent Era

A new IBM Institute for Business Value study highlights a growing skills crisis as enterprises rush to deploy AI and agentic automation. The research shows data readiness is now the biggest barrier to AI value creation, even as organizations dramatically increase hiring for emerging AI–data roles. 

According to the survey, 82% of chief data officers (CDOs) are hiring data positions that did not exist last year such as AI agent supervisors, generative AI data scientists, prompt engineers, and LLM quality testers. Yet 77% of leaders say they are struggling to fill these roles. Only 26% of CDOs are confident their data is prepared to support AI-driven revenue growth. 

Despite these challenges, demand for AI agents continues to rise: 83% of CDOs believe the benefits outweigh the risks, and 77% report confidence in early AI agent outcomes. Still, core data issues remain the top obstacles to scaling AI: 

• Accessibility: slow response times, low satisfaction 

• Completeness: missing values and low compliance 

• Integrity: limited data lineage and inconsistent entry 

• Accuracy: high error rates and validation failures 

• Consistency: mismatched formats and naming systems 

To address these gaps, enterprises are sharply increasing investment. Data strategy now accounts for 13% of IT budgets, up from just 4% in 2023. Most CDOs (81%) say data initiatives must be tightly integrated into the organization’s overall technology roadmap. 

The study recommends seven actions for staying ahead as AI agents reshape modern data operations. Using AI to cleanse and validate data, democratizing access across teams, building forward-looking data strategies, tapping unstructured and multimodal data, tying KPIs to business outcomes, expanding organization-wide data literacy, and investing in intuitive analytics tools for non-technical users. 

As AI acceleration continues, one theme is clear: data capability—not model capability—is becoming the defining competitive advantage. 

 

Source: 

https://www.zdnet.com/article/7-ways-to-be-a-data-superstar-in-the-ai-era-and-stay-ahead-of-agents/