Business is being driven increasingly by data and analytics, and organisations in both the public and private sectors are investing to develop their data and analytics capabilities. Embedding analytics capabilities and developing an analytics culture is a multi-stage journey, and organisations are at different stages or levels of maturity.

At Deloitte, we have been tracking the measures that organisations have been taking to develop their data, analytics and AI capabilities, and have carried out annual surveys since 2017. This year we have conducted a survey of 263 client organisations from around the world, ranging in size (37% small, 21% medium-size and 42% large) and spread across business sectors, to establish how far they have reached in their journey, and what may be barriers to progress that they are facing.

We call our respondents Insight Driven Organisations, or IDOs, which we define as those that have succeeded in embedding analytical capabilities and a data culture in their decision-making processes. The individuals providing the survey responses are all involved in data and analytics within their organisation.

Over time we expect the most successful organisations will be those that adopt advanced analytics, including artificial intelligence, to enhance their insights for decision-making. The data from our survey can be used by organisations to benchmark their progress, and consider whether they are ahead of others, gaining competitive advantage, or whether they may be trailing behind.

We have used responses from the survey to produce a report that covers two key themes:

• Strategy, people and process. This looks at the investment priorities for organisations over the next 12 months to enhance their data, analytics and AI capabilities, and barriers to progress that they aim to overcome. It also provides some analysis of the skills shortages in various specialised activities, which are a major barrier to progress for many organisations. We also look at where resources for analytics are located within organisations, and who is accountable for their use.
• Data, tech and AI. This looks at the quality and completeness of the data used by organisations, the problems they face in maintaining or improving it, and the technology from vendors that they are using for this task. We also look at the extent to which AI is being adopted, and the barriers that organisations face to its adoption.

In this report, we summarise the main findings from the survey. If you would like to dive deeper into the responses we received, we should be delighted to discuss them with you.