AI, analytics and automation critical to corporate strategists' success: Gartner

Business leaders will continue to grow their adoption of AI, analytics and automation to create organisational success. 

A new Gartner survey finds that nearly 80 percent of corporate strategists believe analytics, AI and automation will be critical to their success over the next two years.

The survey from Gartner highlighted that 50 percent of strategic planning and execution activities could be partially or fully automated; currently only 15 percent are.

While most corporate strategists said that they are using descriptive and diagnostic analytics, less than half said they are using more advanced tools such as predictive, prescriptive or graph analytics.

Similarly, only 20 percent of strategists reported using AI-related tools, such as machine learning or natural language processing, for their function.

However, a large percentage of strategy leaders said they are either piloting these tools or exploring use options. For example, 51 percent said they are investigating machine learning and 45 percent said the same for predictive analytics.

David Akers, director research at Gartner said leveraging analytics and AI for more efficient, insightful strategy decisions is one of the biggest challenges and opportunities, corporate strategists face this year.

“For years, strategists have told their businesses: If you want to stay competitive and effective, you need to go digital. Now, they appear ready to apply that guidance to their own workflows,” he said.

One of the biggest obstacles to implementation is establishing a clear use case for new technologies, Garner analysts wrote.

From the survey, 52 percent of strategists report that this is a top-three challenge — the most selected response.

Akers said there are several reasons for this.

“Strategists face an unfamiliar vendor market, have too many options to choose from and have little precedent to build upon,” he said.

Much of the advanced technology that strategists said they are aiming to implement is already being used successfully elsewhere.