Businesses Face Significant AI Adoption Gap, Survey Finds
The findings reveal a pressing need for improved data governance, scalable infrastructure, and analytics readiness to unlock AI’s transformative potential.
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As AI adoption transitions from a competitive advantage for early adopters to an industry benchmark across sectors, the results of an IDC survey by Qlik examine the current challenges businesses face when adopting advanced AI technologies.
The findings highlight a significant gap between ambition and execution. While 89% of organizations have updated their data strategies to incorporate Generative AI, only 26% have deployed AI solutions at scale. Thus, revealing a pressing need for improved data governance, scalable infrastructure, and analytics readiness to unlock AI’s transformative potential.
The IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by Qlik, shows that businesses are prioritizing foundational data ecosystems over solely implementing AI models. AI is projected to contribute $19.9 trillion to the global economy by 2030, but many organizations are struggling with execution. Without addressing key issues such as data accuracy and governance, businesses risk falling into an “AI scramble,” where ambition outpaces their ability to implement effective solutions.
Stewart Bond, Research Vice President for Data Integration and Intelligence at IDC, noted, “Generative AI has sparked widespread excitement, but our findings reveal a significant readiness gap. Businesses must address core challenges like data accuracy and governance to ensure AI workflows deliver sustainable, scalable value.”
James Fisher, Chief Strategy Officer at Qlik, added, “AI’s potential hinges on how effectively organizations manage and integrate their AI value chain. This research highlights a sharp divide between ambition and execution. Businesses that fail to build systems for delivering trusted, actionable insights will quickly fall behind.”
Although 80% of organizations are investing in Agentic AI workflows, only 12% are confident that their infrastructure can support autonomous decision-making. Organizations that treat data as a product are seven times more likely to deploy Generative AI at scale. Despite the growing trend to embed analytics into enterprise applications, only 23% of organizations have fully integrated them.
These findings underscore the urgent need for businesses to focus on governance, infrastructure, and data integration to fully realize AI’s potential.
