Altair Global Survey Reveals Significant Opportunities to Improve Efficiency, Scale, and Success of Enterprise AI and Data Projects

Survey identifies opportunities to remove organizational, technological, and financial friction      

TROY, Mich., June 6, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Altair (NASDAQ: ALTR), a global leader in computational science and artificial intelligence (AI), released results from an international survey which revealed high rates of adoption and implementation of organizational data and AI strategies globally. The survey also revealed that project successes suffer due to three main types of friction: organizational, technological, and financial.

"Organizations today recognize the imperative of using their data as a strategic asset to create competitive advantages," said James R. Scapa, founder and chief executive officer, Altair. "But friction points clearly exist around people, technology, and investment preventing organizations from gaining the data-driven insights needed to deliver results. To achieve what we call 'Frictionless AI,' businesses must make the shift to self-service data analytics tools that empower non-technical users to work easily and cost-effectively across complex technology systems and avoid the friction inhibiting them from moving forward."

The independent survey of more than 2,000 professionals in 10 countries and multiple industries showed a high failure rate of AI and data analytics projects (between 36% and 56%) where friction between organizational departments exists.

The Three Main Areas of Friction

Overall, the survey identified organizational, technological, and financial friction as the main culprits hindering data and AI project success.

Organizational Friction

The survey found organizations are struggling to fill data science roles, which is a significant cause of friction.

• 75% of respondents say they struggle to find enough data science talent
• 35% say AI literacy is low among the majority of their workforce
• 58% say the shortage of talent and the time it takes to upskill current employees is the most prevalent problem in their AI strategy adoption

Technological Friction 

More than half of respondents say their organization often faces technical limitations that are slowing down data and AI initiatives.

• Overall, respondents struggle most with data processing speed, along with making informed decisions quickly and experiencing data quality issues
• Almost two-thirds of respondents (63%) said their organization tends to make working with AI-driven data tools more complicated than it needs to be
• 33% cited legacy systems' inability to develop advanced AI and machine learning initiatives as a recurring technology-related issue that causes friction

Financial friction