The Future of

Intelligence
The Business Leader’s Guide to Mapping Your
Organization’s Enterprise Intelligence
IDC eBook | The Future of Intelligence: The Business Leader’s Guide to Mapping Your Organization’s Enterprise Intelligence

Enterprises are looking to prioritize gaining value

through greater intelligence. They want to build out the
capabilities that fuel the future of intelligence to deliver
insights at scale throughout the organization.
However, many enterprises are
struggling under the weight of
persistent challenges, from data silos
that prevent scaling intelligence efforts,
to data illiteracy, to a lack of personnel
and processes that prevent enterprises
from fully generating value from their
intelligence efforts. Enterprises will
need to address these challenges in
order to map their path toward a future
of intelligence.

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IDC eBook | The Future of Intelligence: The Business Leader’s Guide to Mapping Your Organization’s Enterprise Intelligence

Defining the Problem

When it comes to addressing barriers to intelligence, there are Organized
20%
two places to start: data and processes. IDC’s Enterprise Activity ~15% ~5%
and Technology Distribution Map illustrates the challenge most
enterprises face with these elements. This map (right) makes
two assumptions about data and processes that, while they may
vary between industries and individual enterprises, reflect IDC’s
observations of enterprises today.

Data
The first assumption is that about 80% of data in a typical ~65% ~15%
enterprise is unorganized (or undefined). This data is sometimes
referred to as dark or dormant data because it exists in the
enterprise but is not being used to generate value, or because
it exists in micro-siloes of disconnected spreadsheets. IDC’s
Unorganized
research suggests that of all the data created today, about 27% is 80%
deemed useful if tagged. Of that data, only 44% is tagged, which Ad Hoc Structured
80%
Process 20%
means that 88% of the total created data is unorganized.
IDC has rounded all calculations on this map to the nearest 5%. © Copyright 2020 IDC

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IDC eBook | The Future of Intelligence: The Business Leader’s Guide to Mapping Your Organization’s Enterprise Intelligence

The second assumption is that about 80% of business

processes are ad hoc or at least not fully standardized. There
is little long-term strategy or scaling of these processes
outside of individual projects or groups.
Overall, this means that ad hoc projects based on unorganized data represents about 64% of an enterprise’s current activity.
Only 4% of an enterprise’s activity takes place with structured processes based on well-organized data. Enterprises
should strive to define their processes, organize their data, and tackle the 64% area of the map that represents the
enterprise intelligence white space. The following pages illustrate four ways to achieve that goal.

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IDC eBook | The Future of Intelligence: The Business Leader’s Guide to Mapping Your Organization’s Enterprise Intelligence

1. Addressing Process
Too many enterprises and knowledge workers still think that majority of their
activity is truly ad hoc or unstructured and based on tacit knowledge that can’t
be captured or explained. They lose sight of the forest of larger enterprise-wide
initiatives for the trees of their individual projects, and don’t realize those trees can
contribute more to the organization beyond the initial project. If more processes
and interactions were mined, monitored, and analyzed, there would be an
opportunity to increase the percentage of processes that are structured.

When Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. followed rigorous monitoring and analysis of all processes
at its Japan headquarters, the company experienced an almost immediate “operational volume
reduction of 400,000 hours annually” and “generation of 3 million hours of capacity in three
years to be utilized with the expansion of value-added operations.” By applying new process
automation technology, the organization produced an additional capacity equivalent to the
workload of about 1,500 people.

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IDC eBook | The Future of Intelligence: The Business Leader’s Guide to Mapping Your Organization’s Enterprise Intelligence

2. Addressing Data
IDC’s research suggests that only about 10% of data deemed potentially useful
is analyzed. If we expand our view to all data created, then only 2.5% of it is
being analyzed. If more data were organized, or defined, or tagged, there would
be an opportunity to include it in analysis.
There is a big disconnect in the time and resources spent on data collection
versus data analysis. Data professionals spend 82% of their time preparing,
finding, and governing enterprise versus 18% analyzing that data. Enterprises
should begin by identifying why there is such a gap in the two capabilities. Is it too
difficult to tag the data for analysis? Or is it because the organization doesn’t have
enough imagination to see the potential in the data and lacks methodologies to
quantify the value from it in ways that deliver insights at scale?

Much of the data deemed potentially useful is data collected about and related to consumers. IDC
calls this the “digital reflection.” We estimate that by 2023, nearly 26 times more data will exist
about consumers than consumers create themselves.

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IDC eBook | The Future of Intelligence: The Business Leader’s Guide to Mapping Your Organization’s Enterprise Intelligence

3. Addressing Technology
Technology Distribution Across the Data and Process Map
Technology plays a huge role in helping organizations better (Organized data, ad hoc (Organized data, structured process):
process): business intelligence enterprise applications prebuilt to
organize their data and structure their processes. Organizations tools used for ad hoc analysis support a specific function
that want to move towards the upper right-hand quadrant can Organized
20%
expect more artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) ~15% ~5%
capabilities in their technologies. In fact, 36% of the map will be From: Reporting From: Enterprise apps
To: AI-powered analytics To: Intelligent apps
represented by investment in better intelligence embedded in the
existing IT portfolio.

Data
But the real transformative opportunity for enterprises is in that ~65% ~15%
64% of unorganized, ad hoc processes and data activity. It is here
From: Spreadsheets From: RPI
where investment in automating knowledge work by turning more To: Decision environments To: IPA

tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge must occur. This work also Unorganized
80%
includes the creation of new, holistic decision models for every Ad Hoc
80%
Process Structured
20%

function. Enterprises (in both private and public sectors) must © Copyright 2020 IDC

(Unorganized data, ad hoc process): (Unorganized data, structured

invest in the new generation of decision-centric computing and limited intelligence technologies; process): automated process
knowledge management technology that can help synthesize all manual data sets such as technologies, such as robotic
disconnected spreadsheets process automation RPA)
data, learn from it, and pervasively deliver insights at scale. This is
the new opportunity for IT to shine and create lasting differentiation.

Source: IDC, Future of Intelligence: Insights at Scale, #US45720519 7

IDC eBook | The Future of Intelligence: The Business Leader’s Guide to Mapping Your Organization’s Enterprise Intelligence

4. Addressing Automation
Is investing in automation technology the magic cure all for fixing process, data, and technology
challenges? Well, not quite. There are intelligence opportunities in each of the four areas of our map,
and each requires a distinct approach. That includes the approach to automation.

This approach should include an

assessment of the as-is situation
based on a tool such as a maturity
model and the assessment of
applicability of AI-based technology
based on the interplay between
humans and machines as described
in IDC’s Artificial Intelligence–Based
Automation Evolution Framework (IDC
#US44524318).

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IDC eBook | The Future of Intelligence: The Business Leader’s Guide to Mapping Your Organization’s Enterprise Intelligence

Begin on the Path to the Future

of Intelligence with the Enterprise
Activity and Technology Map
Beginning on the path to greater enterprise intelligence can feel daunting. Identifying potential data silos and challenges
with organizing data; meticulously monitoring processes, behavior, and events, and analyzing the results; benchmarking
changing technology needs – all of these steps can help your organization better corral its data, processes, technology
and automation capabilities and better deliver the value that comes from greater enterprise intelligence.

Learn why IDC is tracking the future of intelligence so closely; watch

our new video featuring IDC’s GVP of Analytics and Information
Management Dan Vesset: https://youtu.be/M9AYD4Khw9s

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