Merck and Mastercard have demonstrated measurable returns from agentic AI deployment—drug discovery cycles reduced by a third, marketing compliance accelerated by 80%—yet both organisations attribute their success to foundational work that preceded any agent implementation. Sean Finnerty, Merck's VP of Digital Platforms, explicitly frames infrastructure as the prerequisite, not the afterthought. This distinction matters because it inverts the typical vendor narrative around AI capability. The story suggests that teams evaluating agentic AI platforms should interrogate what their organisation's data architecture, API maturity, and process standardisation actually look like before signing contracts. For CX teams already running Agentforce or similar solutions, this raises a critical question: are performance gaps stemming from the agent itself, or from upstream data quality and integration debt that no amount of model sophistication can overcome?
The implication for CX operations is structural rather than tactical. Mastercard and Merck didn't achieve results by bolting agents onto existing systems; they invested in plumbing—data pipelines, system interoperability, process documentation—that allowed agents to operate with reliable inputs and clear decision boundaries. This pattern suggests that the ROI gap between early adopters and laggards in agentic AI won't be determined by model capability alone, but by which organisations have already completed the unsexy work of data governance and integration. For support leaders evaluating whether to prioritise agent deployment or infrastructure modernisation, the evidence points decisively toward the latter. The question becomes not whether your team can afford to delay agentic AI, but whether it can afford to deploy it without the foundational systems that make it actually work.
Merck is using AI agents to cut drug discovery cycles by a third and ship compliant marketing materials up to 80% faster — but VP of Digital Platforms Sean Finnerty says the only reason it's working is because they built the infrastructure first.And the pharmaceutical manufacturer is seeing pro