Immature data strategy may be the biggest hidden danger to enterprise AI initiatives
Actian's 2025 Data Governance Maturity Report indicates that corporate executives are overly confident in their data strategies, with actual data maturity assessments being 12% higher than those of daily data workers. Nearly 90% of data professionals report scaling and complexity issues, and over 80% face governance and compliance problems. Experts warn that weak data frameworks will erode trust, drive up costs, and hinder the deployment of agentic AI.
Key Takeaways:
- Actian's 2025 Data Governance Maturity Report, released in late July, surveyed over 600 enterprise data professionals. Results show that executives rate their organization's data maturity 12% higher than workers who handle data daily.
- Despite high-level decision-makers rating their data strategies highly, enterprises still face multiple challenges. Nearly 90% of data professionals report difficulties with scale and complexity, and over four-fifths of respondents cite governance and compliance issues. Additionally, enterprises face access and security risks, as well as data quality, trust, and skills gaps.
- To address these obstacles, enterprises are prioritizing data governance. Over half of respondents expect that stronger governance will significantly improve AI implementation outcomes, data quality, and trust in business decisions.
Deep Dive:
As C-suite executives heavily bet on AI for productivity gains and process optimization, CIOs are feeling the urgency to solve data challenges.
"AI is both a key driver and a major challenge for data governance," said Emma McGrattan, CTO of Actian, in a statement.
For organizations eager to deploy AI across various workflows, upgrading data processing is imperative. A Collibra survey from April showed that over four-fifths of decision-makers said data ownership has shifted over the past year as AI adoption increased.
As enterprises embark on agentic AI adoption, more changes are likely on the horizon.
"Agents need structured, quality information from databases, but also unstructured information, which makes up 80% of enterprise information," Stijn Christiaens, co-founder and chief data citizen at Collibra, told CIO Dive. "The challenge with unstructured data has always been that it's scattered across different systems... Extracting valuable data points from Google Drive or PDFs has been too difficult and complex in the past."
Weak data frameworks and poor data hygiene can threaten enterprise ambitions, eroding trust and driving up costs. CIOs who can accurately assess the resilience and sustainability of their data strategies will be better positioned to lead future AI efforts.
"To make agents work properly, we ultimately have to solve the data problem," Christiaens said. "There will be a lot of complexity ahead."