The AI in Business Podcast Turning Consumer Goods Data into Real-Time Business Decisions - with Michael Finley of AnswerRocket
Nov 19, 2025
Michael Finley, Chief Technology Officer at AnswerRocket, shares insights on harnessing AI agents for real-time business decisions. He emphasizes the importance of training agents to align with business goals and providing them with reliable data to prevent hallucinations. Finley discusses the need for enterprise-grade software packaging and warns against over-restriction, which can limit capabilities. He advocates for governance in data management and highlights the value of leveraging multiple data sources to drive insights without extensive harmonization efforts.
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Agents Need Agency And Purpose
- An agent's power comes from its ability to take actions, not just chat.
- Design agents with clear business goals, tools, tests, and user packaging to create value.
Train Agents On Your Business Processes
- Give agents the business strategy and human training they'd need to do the job.
- Provide valid, consumable data and tools so models don't hallucinate solutions.
Don’t Water Down Agent Capabilities
- Avoid over-guardrailing agents after minor variability in demos.
- Iterate engineering and testing to harden capabilities instead of narrowing their scope to near-useless levels.