A recent survey shows that while 77% of business leaders think accessing data for their jobs is easy, IT teams face real challenges with data management. Morning Consult surveyed 4,000 business leaders and tech professionals for Capital One, revealing that 70% of IT staff spend up to four hours daily fixing data issues, checking for accuracy, and correcting errors. This not only drags down productivity but also highlights bigger problems with how data is managed and governed.
The survey also suggests that data culture is crucial for success with artificial intelligence, but only 35% of respondents believe their organizations have a strong data culture. Many cited inconsistent support and education as major hurdles. Over 20% acknowledged their organizations are lacking in strong data culture, which negatively impacts leadership support and talent development.
Despite these challenges, 87% of business leaders feel their organizations have a modern data ecosystem ready for AI deployment. However, only 13% of technical respondents are confident they can resolve data issues in under an hour, showing a gap between business ambitions and the technical hurdles that need addressing.
Companies are eager to implement advanced AI like multi-modal AI, which requires processing large amounts of unstructured data. Yet, the disconnect between how easy leaders perceive data management to be and the actual time spent fixing problems reveals that many organizations underestimate the impact of poor data management.
The survey also showed mixed priorities on data security among business leaders. While 76% ranked data security as their top concern for AI initiatives, just over half—53%—are actually prioritizing data management to address risks. Even more concerning is that 38% admit they only give moderate importance to data management. While 58% are using data encryption as a security measure, a mere 20% utilize tokenization.
When it comes to cloud integration, 41% of leaders and 33% of advanced practitioners are scaling automation across their organizations. In contrast, only 15% of leaders and 18% of practitioners in earlier stages of implementation are piloting projects.
Cloud integration is crucial for effective data management in support of AI, according to Terren Peterson, Capital One’s vice president of engineering. He emphasizes the need for a strong data foundation, advocating for a single data pipeline with standardized data. Organizations that fully embrace cloud technology tend to manage data better for AI compared to those that rely on on-premise IT systems. Peterson points out that cloud-native firms can build their data platforms with just a few clicks.
