61 Percent of Global Businesses are Scaling Back AI Investment as a Result of Trust Issues

Qlik study reveals that despite 88% of businesses knowing AI is fundamental to success, factors including a lack of trust, a lack of skills and data governance challenges are hampering AI projects

Qlik, a global leader in data integration, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), today launched research of 4,200 C-Suite executives and AI decision makers, revealing what is hindering AI progress globally and how to overcome these barriers.

A lack of AI skills, governance issues and insufficient resources are all hindering successful AI deployment, causing many projects to get stuck in the planning stages. Ready-made solutions are a preferred way for global businesses to start working with AI solutions, and see return on investment in the technology.

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AI projects are stuck in planning, or getting scrapped

The importance of AI in achieving organisational success is not underestimated, with Qlik’s research finding that 88% of senior decision makers feel AI is absolutely essential or very important to achieving success – including reaching strategic goals and increasing profits.

Despite this recognition, few AI projects make it out of the planning stage to completion or implementation, with many getting scrapped. In fact, 11% of global businesses have between 50 to 100+ AI projects in the scoping or planning stages, which are not yet live projects. And 20% have also had up to 50 projects progress to planning or beyond, only to have to pause or cancel them entirely.

Being able to progress more AI projects from planning to successful deployment will be vital for organisations to see a return on investment made into the technology, and to better serve customers against competition. Given the struggle to bring AI projects to fruition, many AI decision makers [74%] are seeing the value in ‘ready-made’ AI solutions as a good foundation to enhance AI development.

Lack of skills, data governance, budget and trust are the culprits

There are multiple factors slowing down or totally blocking these AI projects, with the most significant being challenges around a lack of skills to develop AI [23%] and to roll out AI once developed [22%], data governance challenges [23%], budget constraints [21%], and a lack of trusted data for AI to work with [21%].

Whilst there is an overwhelming level of understanding around the need for AI, with almost all respondents [95%] saying they know what types of AI could be used in their business, trust from elsewhere in the business appears to be holding some companies back.

Over a third [37%] of AI decision makers say their senior managers lack trust in AI, and 42% feel less senior employees don’t trust the technology. A fifth [21%] believe their customers don’t trust AI either.

Worryingly, 61% say this lack of trust is significantly reducing AI investment in their business.

Better knowledge sharing across a business and its customers can help to increase that trust, and subsequent investment, as 74% are looking to promote the benefits of the technology more within their organisation and to their customers.

Building trust is paramount to advancing AI implementation globally

Providing AI training to upskill the workforce is another way to build trust and ensure AI projects get beyond planning and into successful deployment.

Globally, 65% of AI decision makers believe their country has the potential to lead the world in AI skills in the next five years. To achieve this, 76% believe their industries need to be better at nurturing and upskilling staff for AI, and 75% think their government needs to provide more funding and training in AI.

“Business leaders know the value of AI, but they face a multitude of barriers that prevent them from moving from proof of concept to value creating deployment of the technology. The first step to creating an AI strategy is to identify a clear use case, with defined goals and measures of success, and use this to identify the skills, resources and data needed to support it at scale. In doing so you start to build trust and win management buy-in to help you succeed,” said James Fisher, Chief Strategy Officer at Qlik.

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