In early October, Cognizant and Google Cloud hosted a workshop to lay the groundwork for Data Strategy 2025. The event brought together CIOs, CDOs, and their direct reports from various industries to start drafting their data strategies for 2025.
The workshop began with an analysis of each company’s current state, assessing their gen AI maturity—categorised as pioneers, catalysts, visionaries, or masters. Participants then reflected on their 2024 data strategies, identifying key elements and challenges. Finally, the focus shifted to defining the main components of the strategy for 2025, outlining goals and necessary tools.
Discover your AI maturity level
Take this quick 12-question quiz to gauge if your organisation is a Pioneer, Catalyst, Visionary, or Master. Understanding your maturity level will provide context and relevance as you continue reading through the blog.
It was an interesting afternoon with lots of valuable insights that everyone could learn from. Here are some of the key takeaways:
Key obstacles for organisations beginning their AI journey
Many organisations in the initial phases of AI adoption (Pioneers and Catalysts) encounter significant challenges, including:
While these early adopters are intent on laying the groundwork for AI capabilities and assessing its operational impact, they often grapple with uncertainty, particularly around trusting AI-generated outcomes.
Accelerating organisational maturity: three core success factors
Our experience highlights three critical factors that can help organisations gain momentum and overcome initial AI adoption hurdles:
Where should you begin? A robust business case is essential. Address the feasibility of your AI initiative, but also consider its long-term viability and user adoption. Additionally, implementing a master data management strategy is a critical step to ensure data accuracy and consistency. However, keep your strategic vision clear—aligning efforts toward a unified goal prevents fragmentation and ensures all initiatives drive toward impactful outcomes.
Drivers and challenges for visionary and master organisations
For organisations progressing through the "visionary" to "master" stages of AI maturity, unique drivers and challenges shape their path.
Unlike early adopters, these organisations benefit from well-established leadership support and robust technological infrastructure, laying a solid foundation for AI initiatives. This setup enables a collaborative environment where data-sharing and insights flow smoothly, fostering a culture of engagement. Executive commitment and clear internal demand for AI solutions allow these organisations to pursue advanced AI integration with greater focus.
While foundational issues such as data quality and organisational reluctance to change persist, mature organisations also face the following hurdles:
To further accelerate generative AI initiatives, these companies benefit from external pressures—input from partners, competitive demands, and evolving business needs drive innovation beyond internal capabilities. These organisations concentrate on integrating AI seamlessly into daily operations. By embedding AI deeper into their workflows, they drive consistent value while maintaining compliance and adaptability in an evolving landscape.
Summary
For pioneer organisations, the main takeaway is that most are heavily focused on operational efficiency, with employees as the primary users. For smaller organisations, productivity improvement is especially crucial. However, data quality issues and resistance to change are seen as the biggest risks. Assessing the impact of different use cases and developing a clear gen AI strategy remains a top priority. As organisations progress, scaling gen AI adoption and involving users becomes a key driver of change, with productivity improvement continuing to be the most common metric of success.
Among the visionary and master organisations, the impact of outcomes is striking. More mature organisations are serving target groups beyond their employees, deploying gen AI for customer service, claims management, and more. Their ability to innovate on this frontier also attracts top talent. However, rapidly changing regulations and evolving user demands are seen as the primary challenges to scale further.
As we navigate the evolving landscape of AI, it’s crucial to stay ahead of the curve and leverage the right strategies for your organisation’s unique needs. Whether you’re just starting your AI journey or looking to scale your existing initiatives, our team is here to help. Let’s work together to unlock the full potential of AI and achieve your business goals
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