Seventy-nine percent of corporate strategists said that technologies such as analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation will be critical to their success over the next two years, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc.
Strategists said that, on average, 50% of strategic planning and execution activities could be partially or fully automated; currently only 15% are.
The survey was conducted from October 2022 through April 2023 among 200 corporate strategy leaders in North America, Western Europe, Asia/Pacific, and Australia/New Zealand, across different industries, revenue and company sizes.
“Leveraging analytics and AI for more efficient, insightful strategy decisions is one of the biggest challenges, and opportunities, corporate strategists face this year,” said David Akers, Director, Research at Gartner. “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.”
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 (see Figure 1). Similarly, only 20% 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% said they are investigating machine learning and 45% said the same for predictive analytics.