In a year marked by significant growth for the data economy (+20%, with the market reaching 3.4 billion), only 24% of companies are satisfied with the quality of their information assets. This is one of the key findings in the 2024 research by the Big Data & Business Analytics Observatory at the Politecnico di Milano, of which Irion is a partner. Both the public sector and mid-sized companies (+27%) are moving toward greater maturity in data management, and some sectors are growing above average, such as utilities (+28%).
The survey by the Milan-based university compared the ‘data journey’ of companies to a sailboat on the open sea: ‘Companies are realizing that the ‘wind’—in other words, data—needs to be harnessed and organized; therefore, the data management aspect is growing significantly. And capturing it isn’t enough if we don’t have an excellent crew,’ explained Carlo Vercellis, professor of Machine Learning and scientific director of the Observatory, during the annual event presenting the results.
Data Strategy and Governance: The Situation
One step forward involves the ‘democratization’ of business intelligence: in the surveyed companies, the share of (non-expert) users utilizing reports and dashboards has increased from 35% to 40%. However, the ability to extract value from data—a process that is lengthy, complex, and not solely technological—is still a challenge, as emphasized by the Politecnico. There is also growth in the share of advanced companies (23%, five points higher than in 2023) on the Data Strategy Index.
Among the common characteristics of more advanced companies are clearly defined roles and responsibilities for Data Governance. In contrast, ‘below-average’ companies (41%) struggle to measure the economic benefits of Data Management and rarely have modern data architectures. Experts from the Politecnico di Milano identified three action levers: democratize and make data more pervasive within organizations, achieve more efficient data science, and formalize the data strategy.
With reliable data, AI enters the company
A key topic that organizations need to formalize as soon as possible: “It takes too much trust to do something merely out of routine; Data Management and Governance allow Artificial Intelligence to truly enter the company” emphasized by Mario Vellella, Domain Advisory Manager at Irion. Otherwise, it’s difficult to overcome cultural resistance. “With AI, Data Quality evolves, but the foundations remain the same: the only difference is in the object of my checks. And we must ensure it has fewer biases than we do,’ added the domain expert.”
Significant synergies have emerged between these two realms: data quality and AI – echoed Enrico Galimberti – According to Gartner, even in 2025, poor Data Quality will remain one of the main barriers to the development of advanced analytics projects”. During the conference, Irion’s Presales Manager introduced DAISY, the Data Artificial Intelligence System integrated into Irion EDM®: an open and flexible environment where users can select their preferred LLM model to implement Augmented Data Quality & Governance solutions with AI support.
