Organizations Are Slow to Advance in Data and Analytics

A worldwide survey of 196 organizations by Gartner showed that 91 percent of organizations have not yet reached a "transformational" level of maturity in data and analytics, despite this area being a number one investment priority for CIOs in recent years.

The survey asked respondents to rate their organizations according to Gartner's five levels of maturity for data and analytics. It found that 60 percent of respondents worldwide rated themselves in the lowest three levels. 48 percent of organizations in Asia Pacific (APAC) reported their data and analytics maturity to be in the top two levels. This compares to 44 percent in North America and just 30 percent in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA).

The majority of respondents worldwide assessed themselves at level three (34 percent) or level four (31 percent). Twenty-one percent of respondents were at level two, and 5 percent at the basic level, level one. Only 9 percent of organizations surveyed reported themselves at the highest level, level five, where the biggest transformational benefits lie.

Improving process efficiency was by far the most common business problem that organizations sought to address with data and analytics, with 54 percent of respondents worldwide marking it in their top three problems. Enhancing customer experience and development of new products were the joint second most common uses, with 31 percent of respondents listing each issue.

The survey also revealed that, despite a lot of attention around advanced forms of analytics, 64 percent of organizations still consider enterprise reporting and dashboards their most business-critical applications for data and analytics. In the same manner, traditional data sources such as transactional data and logs also continue to dominate, although 46 percent of organizations now report using external data.

Organizations reported a broad range of barriers that prevent them from increasing their use of data and analytics. There isn't one clear reason; organizations tend to experience a different set of issues depending on their geography and current level of maturity. However, the survey identified the three most common barriers as: defining data and analytics strategy; determining how to get value from projects; and solving risk and governance issues.

In terms of infrastructure, on-premises deployments still dominate globally, ranging from 43 to 51 percent of deployments depending on use case. Pure public cloud deployments range from 21 to 25 percent of deployments, while hybrid environments make up between 26 and 32 percent.