The gap between wanting AI and trusting it has closed.
By Madhavi W. Chandra, Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Entrinsik
For years, the promise of business intelligence has centered on a simple idea: give people the ability to ask questions of their data and get trustworthy answers back. That’s powerful, but it’s also incomplete. Knowing what’s happening in your organization is only half the battle. The real value comes from doing something about it, quickly, and without having to rebuild your entire technology stack to get there.
That’s exactly the gap we set out to close with the launch of Informer Apps and Informer GO.
Beyond Dashboards to Building Solutions
Informer Apps marks a shift in what organizations can do with their data. Instead of only asking questions of it, they can now build solutions to specific business problems, connecting trusted data, AI and operational workflows into one governed solution. Organizations with governance and access controls already in place can extend those protections to new AI-powered solutions, while those still building that foundation can use Informer to establish the rules and permissions needed for sound, trusted AI.
By applying AI inside the governed data environment, organizations can address business problems with the proper data context in place.
As our CEO, Brad Leupen, put it:
That last point is the one I keep coming back to: speed from idea to value. It’s one thing to talk about AI transforming operations. It’s another to hand the people closest to a problem the tools to actually solve it themselves.
What Organizations are Already Building
The range of Apps taking shape across our customer base tells the story better than any feature list could:
- A Chief of Staff App that keeps executives current on key metrics and exceptions
- A Campus Companion that gives students 24/7 secure, personalized answers about financial aid and course planning through the institution’s own branded assistant,
- A Classroom Utilization App that flags mismatches between room capacity and enrollment.
Other organizations are using Apps to benchmark employee compensation against internal and industry data, turn benefit enrollment PDFs into reviewable automated summaries, and track acquisitions from document collection through lender packaging, with staff validation at key steps.
These are real applications, with the logic, data, and workflow to back them up. They can carry server routes, a database, messaging and agents. They integrate with other systems like Ellucian Student, powered by Banner and Colleague, AMS360, Qualia, DocuSign, Salesforce, Workday, QuickBooks, Google Drive, OneDrive and more.
There is an admin portal for Data Governance behind all of it, including usage, health, storage, agents, metrics, and more, so the tenth App is as visible and as governable as the first, and it arrives just as quickly.
Proof in Practice
At Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, the Academic Operations and Support Services team manages reporting across 200+ programs, five campuses, and online offerings, tracking where each program is offered and how much is available at each location. For accreditation and student support purposes, this had been compiled manually for decades.
“Informer Apps makes this process more efficient and more accurate, and it’s saving us weeks of work,” said Debra NeeSmith, Associate Vice President of Academic Operations and Support at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College.
What strikes me most about this story isn’t just the time saved, it’s who solved the problem. As Beth Pulliam, the college’s CGCIO and Associate Vice President of Information Technology, described it:
That’s the outcome we designed for! We wanted to put the ability to build directly in the hands of the people who understand the problem best, allowing them to solve their needs in a secure, governed way.
Introducing Informer GO – a Workspace for Every Role
Alongside Apps, we’ve launched Informer GO, the companion experience to Informer. It gives users a single place to build, discover, and launch Apps and reports connected to their data. The built-in chat interface also delivers real-time answers to questions about the business.
The design intent here matters. Different roles need different views of the same truth. Executives need enterprise-wide visibility. Managers need operational visibility. Frontline teams need the specific tools relevant to their day-to-day work. Informer GO gives each of them the tools and answers most relevant to their work.
Built on Governance by Default
Here’s the part that’s easy to skip past in a launch announcement, but it’s actually the most important design decision behind Informer Apps and Informer GO – nothing here bypasses the governance and security controls that protect your data today. AI tools have a reputation for creating new risks with new data copies, new access paths, new blind spots for IT and compliance teams to chase down. We built Informer Apps and Informer GO the opposite way. Every App runs inside Informer’s security model, which means:
- Permissions carry over. If a user can’t see certain data today, an App doesn’t quietly open a side door to it. Access rules follow the person, not the App.
- Governance is inherited and not reconfigured. Apps are built on governed data connections. Where those connections are already vetted and approved, Apps use them as-is. Where they aren’t yet, Informer is where they get defined, once, for everything built after.
- The compliance foundation stays intact. Informer operates within a secure, SOC 2 compliant framework, and that framework doesn’t get looser as AI capabilities are added.
For the IT and data teams who are ultimately accountable for what AI touches inside their organization, this is the point that should matter most. Adopting Informer Apps doesn’t mean taking on new risks to get new value. If you’ve already built a foundation you trust, this extends it. If you’re still building one, this is where it gets built.
You don’t have to build it alone, or at all
Everything above is exciting! But let’s be honest: not every organization has the time, staff, or appetite to build their own Apps, and they shouldn’t have to. That’s exactly why we created the Applied AI Team at Entrinsik.
Think of them as your build partner. You bring your business challenge, and they’ll design, build, and deploy the App for you inside the same governed data and permissions environment your team already trusts. You get the outcome without needing to become AI experts overnight, and it’s yours to change, extend and own for good; our door stays open if you want it.
Learn More About Our Applied AI Team
Go Behind the Build
None of this happened by accident, and it didn’t happen in a straight line either. We’re releasing Behind the Build, a five-episode series that goes inside the decisions that shaped Informer Apps and Informer GO. You’ll learn how the AI got built into the platform instead of onto it, and how governance is the backbone rather than an afterthought.
If you want the story behind the launch, this is where to find it.
Why This Matters Now
Every organization is under pressure to “do something with AI.” The organizations that will see returns are the ones that apply AI to a foundation of trusted, governed data, rather than treating it as a separate experiment running alongside everything else.
Whether you’re extending an investment you’ve already made in Informer or exploring the platform for the first time, Informer Apps and Informer GO turn that trusted foundation into a launching pad for solving real business problems, faster.
We’re excited to see what you build next.
