Latest news with #businessdecisions
Fast Company
6 days ago
- Business
- Fast Company
Most companies struggle with making data-informed decisions
Should you invest in a new consumer market? Cut that underperforming division? Buy off-the-shelf or build custom technology you urgently need to compete? Over the course of my career, I've seen leaders make good, bad, and risky decisions to guide their businesses. These decisions are often based on consensus, gut instinct or complex financial models—and occasionally, a half-formed idea from the back of a meeting agenda. But years in business have taught me something crucial: Success is driven neither by pure data worship nor blind intuition. Companies need both—especially knowing that today's opportunity could be tomorrow's risk. The path forward requires balancing rigorous analysis with human wisdom and context and ultimately knowing when to say what. The three data traps Companies typically fall into one of three traps when it comes to data. First, low confidence in the data itself. For data to work, it must be trusted and accurate. When leaders are able to pull different reports based on different numbers, confidence evaporates. Major business decisions get derailed because teams can't agree on basic metrics. Without consistent, and accessible, information, even the most sophisticated analytics become useless. Second, companies can get stuck analyzing endless information. If every dashboard drives more questions than answers, that's a losing battle. Businesses chasing endless data or sifting through a deluge risk delaying critical decisions while their competitors move ahead. Analysis paralysis is real—and costly. Finding the sweet spot between information gathering and action is the difference between missing or meeting the market. Third, companies can't over-rely on analytics without human context. Data can reflect what happened and may predict what happens next, but it frequently misses the 'why.' A dashboard may show low engagement from an internal tool and recommend sunsetting it. What this doesn't take into account is the user perspective where maybe they find it hard to use or have competing priorities. Balance data and intuition I spent part of my early career in public relations but exited the industry out of frustration due to the lack of meaningful data at the time, although now it is quite different. We would get a feature in a top-tier outlet, then struggle to measure the business impact. Through this, I learned a valuable lesson about balancing a good story with verifiable stats. This balance matters across every function. Marketing teams solely relying on metrics may miss the emotional connections that drive loyalty, while finance departments only tracking historical performance may miss emerging market signals that leaders can spot. The magic happens when companies combine data-backed insights with human expertise. At West Monroe, we've seen the power of this firsthand. When we worked with a tire distributor to optimize their supply chain, we didn't just build predictive models. We paired real-time analytics and insights to optimize their planning and inventory models WITH the expertise of people who understood supplier relationships and market nuances. The result? A $200 million reduction in working capital—all during pandemic disruptions, when either data or intuition alone would have failed. How to fix it: Build a data-driven culture Build trust in your data first. Start with the basics: Identify the numbers that actually move the needle for your business and ensure everyone defines and measures them consistently. When leaders trust the numbers, they'll use them to make impactful decisions. Bring data where decisions happen. Stop making people hunt through separate dashboards. Instead, embed relevant insights directly into the tools your team already uses. When the right information is available at the right moment, it naturally becomes part of the decision-making process. Show, don't tell. Leaders should visibly incorporate data in their decisions while acknowledging its limitations. Create space in meetings where teams can discuss both hard metrics and real-world observations. Both perspectives deserve equal airtime and consideration. It's never too late to lead with data You can always become a data-driven leader. Even 'walk the halls' executives who have historically avoided analytics can develop this muscle. Start small—identify one key business question where better data would improve decisions. As confidence grows, expand to more complex ones. The most successful leaders won't be those with the most data or the best intuition. They'll be the ones who master the art of balancing both—and take decisive action with confidence.
Forbes
26-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Why Most Agentic AI Projects Still Fail At Scale
First it was generative AI, then AGI captured imaginations. Now, it's agentic AI that's keeping the C-Suite up at night, as business leaders look for AI that doesn't just generate responses, but acts, decides and delivers real business value. Boardrooms are obsessing over it, investors are betting on it, decision makers are piloting it and Gartner analysts are projecting that by 2028, a third of enterprise software will include agentic AI — up from just 1% in 2024 — powering 15% of daily business decisions to be made autonomously by that time. But for all the hype, something isn't clicking and most organizations are still stuck in their pilots, many of which never scale into production or end up failing during deployment. For context, 85% of AI projects fail. And when you ask the people building these tools what's really going on, the consistent theme is that while they have AI agents, they don't really have the ecosystem to support them. Aishwarya Singh, SVP of Digital Collaboration Services at NTT DATA, has seen that story unfold up close. 'The biggest economic bottlenecks include the high initial investment in infrastructure and technology, the cost of integrating AI with existing systems and the need for specialized talent to manage and maintain AI systems,' she told me in an interview. In theory, agentic AI should reduce cost and complexity. But in practice, it adds a new layer of both — especially if companies treat it like a product and not a process. 'Many leaders underestimate the time, effort and resources required for successful integration,' Singh said. 'Ignoring this can lead to project delays, cost overruns and suboptimal performance.' Launched in March of this year, NTT DATA's new Agentic AI Services, built with Microsoft's CoPilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry, aim to fix that — not just by deploying agents, but by supporting the entire lifecycle: advisory, build, implementation, monitoring, retraining and optimization. It's AI infrastructure as a managed service, and it's already being deployed internally across the company. 'In our own internal ticketing systems, productivity improved by 50 to 65%,' Singh said. 'We build agents across ticket types and link them together across omnichannel LLMs so that we can layer on new automation consistently via voice, email and chat.' But that lack of infrastructure or ecosystem, as industry experts put it, isn't the only thing holding agentic AI back. Another issue, and perhaps even bigger, is the AI talent deficit. According to a recent Accenture study of 3,400 executives and 2,000 enterprise projects, only 13% of AI initiatives are delivering significant business value. The reason? Companies are spending three times more on technology than on people — and that AI skills gap is showing. 'Talent readiness is one of the biggest barriers to scaling and unlocking value for companies,' said Jack Azagury, group chief executive for consulting at Accenture. 'One can invest in all the available Gen AI tools, but if your employees don't know how or why to use them, the value will simply not be realized.' Singh agrees, noting that this increasingly wide AI talent gap is why NTT DATA is investing in upskilling 200,000 employees and certifying 15,000 GenAI experts this year alone. 'This has also introduced a lot of ideas around how we can leverage this technology to improve our own business performance, which is leading to incredible new innovations,' she said. When you move past the talent debacle, you face another even greater problem in actually deploying AI. A recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research tracked AI chatbot use across 7,000 workplaces and revealed that these chatbots had almost no significant impact on pay or hours worked in any occupation. Despite wide-scale adoption, the study found that on average, AI only saved employees 3% of their time. Of that, just 3 to 7% was passed on as higher compensation. Even more striking is the finding that most employees redirected their saved time toward other tasks, often ones created by the AI system itself — editing AI output, rechecking hallucinated facts, or adjusting for tone. In other words, the technology added more complexity than it removed. That's similar to what IBM also found in a separate study which showed that only 25% of AI projects deliver their expected ROI. And Informatica's most recent report reveals that data quality and integration issues remain the top reason most AI projects fail. The bottom line is that AI agents don't scale because enterprises don't yet know or understand how to scale the surrounding conditions. If you manage to deploy your AI agents successfully, you now have to worry about what happens after deployment. Even the best AI agent needs a team behind it: developers, data stewards, security architects, trainers, ethicists and more. This is where most companies face the biggest challenge, according to Singh — not in deploying an agent, but in managing what happens next. 'Post-deployment, [agent management] involves regular updates, performance tracking, security audits and alignment with evolving business goals,' she told me. 'A significant pain point we are hearing from clients is how to best manage the surge of agentic AI agents within their organizations.' That's exactly where many organizations are flying blind, building AI agents without a strategy for how to keep them running, governed and optimized at scale. To address this growing challenge, Singh noted that NTT DATA is starting to introduce guardian agents and Red Teaming agents — models designed to monitor security, compliance, and operational integrity as agents proliferate across functions — into their managed stack. So what's working? If agentic AI is burdened by all of these complexities, why's there still such hype about it, so much that many companies around the world plan to have an agentic AI pivot? Singh's answer is that in spite of the complexities and setbacks, agentic AI has real-world use cases that offer a glimpse of its potential when properly deployed. 'We are seeing top use cases in IT services, tactical process automation, customer service and multiagent models for more complex tasks like inventory management,' Singh explained. 'Clients can expect a payback period of 6 to 12 months. Productivity gains often become evident within the first few months.' But those results only show up when there's a complete system behind the agent — one that includes change management, talent development, cross-platform integration and ongoing optimization. As Singh noted, companies that succeed are the ones who prototype quickly with tactical use cases, and hyperscaler-aligned teams ready to scale within their existing cloud environments. Agentic AI won't scale because you hired a vendor. It will scale because you built the internal architecture — including technical, organizational and human — to support it. That's the big message for companies planning to scale agentic AI today, according to analysts, projections and several enterprise case studies. Every agentic AI success story starts with getting the basics right — data, talent and infrastructure. And that, said Singh, requires a lot of planning. The question isn't whether companies can scale their agentic AI projects. It's whether they are ready to do what it takes to get it there.
Forbes
09-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Your Ego Is The Enemy Of Progress
Tom Cattarius, CEO of Arktisquelle and a trusted advisor in the water filtration industry and e-commerce sector. getty We all want to feel important and valued by those around us. But in a business setting, that desire can quietly sabotage your decisions—especially when you're trying to reach the next level of your career (or beyond). Here's how your ego might be holding you back without you even realizing it. Don't get me wrong; being confident in business is crucial. Sales calls, conversations with employees and many other situations rely on confidence. But ego is something completely different. Imagine walking into a meeting and presenting your ideas with confidence. So far, so good, right? But then a colleague, mentor or coach shares a better idea—one that you know, based on their track record, is worth considering. Or let's say you've been stuck at the same revenue level for five years. Suddenly, someone in your industry who started just three years ago is already ahead of you in revenue or profit. Now, you have two choices: You can either let your ego justify why this person is different, why you have disadvantages or why it's not fair. That's the kind of ego I'm talking about—the one that holds you back. Or you can take the harder but more productive path by setting aside those excuses and asking, 'What can I learn from this person's behavior and mindset?' But here's the catch: Ego is tricky. It's easy to see in others, but in ourselves? Not so much. Here are some of the most common ways ego can slow your growth, along with how to recognize it in yourself. You don't have to act on every piece of feedback. But the inability to even listen to feedback—especially from people with more experience than you—is a red flag. When things go well, do you automatically take all the credit? Chances are, your ego is speaking louder than reality. Ask yourself, 'How much of my progress is thanks to my team, mentors or partners?' If you believe no one can do things as well as you, that's your ego talking. Growth in business requires trust and letting go of control. When something goes wrong, do you always blame external factors? Or can you say, 'That one's on me'? Letting ego drive your decisions will slowly erode your business and personal growth. Over time, this leads to: • Damaged Relationships: Eventually, your best people will stop tolerating that behavior. • Missed Opportunities: If the idea didn't come from you, your ego might block it. • Burnout: You'll get frustrated more easily, feeling like you're pushing against invisible walls. I often ask myself, "How many entrepreneurs are stuck at the same revenue level for seven years or more—not because it's impossible to grow, but because their brain is conditioned to believe that it's normal or it's 'hard' or they don't need more?" That mindset kills progress. When I catch myself thinking that way, I stop and say, 'No—that's my ego talking. I need to challenge that belief.' Here are a few powerful ways to keep your ego in check: • Practice radical self-awareness. Ask yourself, 'Who in my age group or industry has already achieved what I want?' If someone else has done it, it's possible for you, too. • Seek feedback—from the right people. Don't take advice from just anyone. Listen to those who have achieved what you want to achieve. • Surround yourself with people who challenge you. Yes, it can feel uncomfortable to be the 'smallest' in the room—in revenue, experience or net worth. But that's exactly where growth happens. • Learn to say 'I was wrong.' It may sting at first, but it's one of the most powerful leadership skills you can develop. Now it's on you. Take some time to reflect and ask yourself, 'Do I need to make any changes here?' If you take one thing from this article, let it be this: Choose growth over being right. When you choose this path, everything shifts. You become more open, more coachable and more effective as a leader. Your team will trust you more because they see that you're willing to learn and adapt. You'll make better decisions based not on protecting your ego, but on what actually works. And over time, that mindset creates a compound effect: stronger relationships, smarter strategies and sustainable growth. Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
