Is your data strategy ready for gen AI? LOB leaders may disagree

Disconnect on data maturity

Analytics and IT leaders overall are confident in the data maturity of their organizations, according to Salesforce’s report. Considering factors such as data capabilities, processes, sponsorship, investment, and vision, 37% of those leaders say their organization’s data maturity is best-in-class, while another 57% say their data maturity is on par with the industry standard. Only 6% feel their data maturity is below industry standard or nonexistent.

Technical leaders were also the most confident in the accuracy of their data. Salesforce found 57% of data and analytics departments and 53% of IT departments were completely confident in data accuracy. Line-of-business departments that depend on that data were much more skeptical, with marketing (45%), sales (42%), and service (40%) leaders expressing less confidence in the accuracy of their organization’s data.

“Ultimately, is the data fresh? That’s more important,” Aytay says. “It’s less about right or wrong. A sales leader needs data in real-time. If the data is 24 to 48 hours old, it’s technically wrong because it’s not fresh.”

Still, 94% of technical leaders say they should be getting more value from their data and 78% say their organizations struggle to drive business priorities with data. Their top data priorities are improving data quality, strengthening security and compliance, building AI capabilities, improving company-wide data literacy, and modernizing tools and technologies. But while the goals may be straightforward, organizations are struggling to achieve them: People don’t need to be sold on the potential of AI, but they do need to be sold on short-term and long-term strategies for AI.

Stakeholder discontent

Essential to that success is a unified data strategy, which 59% of IT leaders say they don’t have — a top concern when it comes to implementing gen AI. Furthermore, 60% say gen AI won’t integrate into their current tech stack.

“If you go out and ask a chief data officer, a head of IT, ‘Is your data strategy aligned?’, well of course they might think it is,” Aytay says. “But is it really aligned to what the other stakeholders in the business need every single day? If I’m a sales leader, I need to know my pipeline. I need to know my forecast. I need to know how many reps I’ve hired. I need to know what my upcoming events are. But if that’s not tied to the IT team and they’re not thinking the way that I think, it’s very hard to actually have an aligned strategy.”