Why CIOs Must Take a Strategic Approach to AI-Ready Data

AI is rapidly transforming business operations, offering new efficiencies, insights and opportunities. But to fully realise its potential, organisations need the right data foundation, including a strong enterprise AI governance framework and an effective AI data management strategy.

By 2026, more than 60% of AI projects will fall short of their business goals due to poor data readiness, according to Gartner’s CIO Guide to AI-Ready Data.

For CIOs, enabling enterprise AI adoption is a strategic priority. Without it, AI initiatives may struggle to deliver expected outcomes, slowing innovation and limiting impact. By taking a proactive approach to enterprise data management, organisations can accelerate AI adoption with confidence and maximise business value.

AI-ready data: The key to AI success

AI is only as effective as the data it’s built on. Poor data quality, lack of enterprise AI governance and a fragmented data management strategy can severely limit AI’s potential. Yet, despite AI’s rapid rise, almost two-thirds of organisations (65%) either do not have AI-ready data or are unsure if they do.

AI-ready data means that:

• Data is aligned to specific AI use cases – Each AI application requires different data types and quality standards. A predictive analytics model won’t use the same data as a generative AI chatbot.
• Data is governed for compliance and security – AI models require trusted, traceable data to meet regulatory and ethical requirements
• Data is optimised for AI consumption – AI-ready data includes structured, unstructured and semi-structured data that is normalised, curated, and accessible for AI models.

Without a strategic approach to AI-ready data, organisations risk stalled AI projects and limited ROI.

Evolving data management for AI

Traditional enterprise data management is too slow, rigid and fragmented to support AI-driven innovation. To maximise AI’s potential, organisations need to rethink their data management strategy and how it will handle the scale, speed and complexity of modern AI workloads.

CIOs play a key role in driving this transformation by modernising enterprise data management to support AI-ready workflows. AI models require continuous data quality improvements, as they depend on diverse, representative datasets, including errors, outliers and anomalies, to improve accuracy and reliability. Without enterprise AI governance in place, organisations risk working with incomplete or biased data, limiting AI’s effectiveness.

To ensure AI success, platforms must be integrated with existing enterprise systems, enabling real-time data refreshes, automated governance and alignment with evolving AI requirements. By strengthening enterprise AI governance and adopting a future-ready data management strategy, CIOs can create an AI-ready foundation that scales with business needs and drives long-term value.

AI-ready data: No one-size-fits-all approach

AI-ready data is determined at the use case level, meaning different enterprise AI applications require different data structures, AI data management frameworks and governance models.

For example:

• Predictive analytics requires structured historical data that is cleaned and formatted for forecasting models.
• Generative AI depends on vast, diverse datasets, including unstructured enterprise content such as emails, reports and customer interactions.
• Real-time AI applications rely on continuously updated, high-frequency data streams that demand responsive governance and oversight.

Since AI use-case development is iterative and dynamic, organisations need a flexible data strategy rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

CIOs as AI-orchestrators and enablers

CIOs play a critical role in coordinating enterprise AI adoption. While data management leaders handle the day-to-day governance, CIOs must set the strategic vision, align AI initiatives with business goals and ensure the right technology investments are in place.

Key responsibilities include:

• Aligning AI initiatives with business objectives – Ensuring AI data strategies directly support innovation, efficiency and competitive advantage.
• Implementing proactive data governance – AI-ready data requires a mix of formal and informal data management practices to balance security and agility.
• Investing in AI-ready data technologies – CIOs must enable automated data curation, compliance enforcement and AI-driven data discovery.

By taking an active role in AI data strategy, CIOs can help their organisations unlock AI’s full potential while maintaining control over data quality, security and compliance.

How EncompaaS enables AI-ready data

The first and most critical AI use case isn’t chatbots, predictive analytics, or automation; it’s organising and protecting your data so that AI can work effectively.

EncompaaS uses AI to transform content chaos into a foundation of high-quality data, enabling regulated organisations to fully harness AI’s potential. By leveraging next-generation AI technologies, the EncompaaS platform identifies, enriches and organises both structured and unstructured data, so that AI models have access to normalised information when they need it.

AI cannot function effectively without compliance and risk controls, which is why EncompaaS applies automated governance policies to de-risk data and ensure alignment with regulatory frameworks. Beyond compliance, the platform also ensures that data is AI-ready for any use case by aligning it with AI initiatives, so only the highest-quality, most relevant data fuels upstream processes.

The future of AI belongs to those with AI-ready data

The organisations that successfully scale AI are the ones investing in data readiness.

By leveraging EncompaaS, organisations can:

• Reduce risk and ensure compliance – AI-driven governance ensures that data is protected and regulatory requirements are met automatically.
• Improve AI model performance – AI-ready data means more accurate insights, better automation and higher-value outcomes.
• Accelerate AI adoption – With a clean, structured and de-risked data foundation, enterprises can confidently deploy AI across the organisation

AI is only as powerful as the data it’s built on. With EncompaaS, your data is primed and ready for AI so you can move faster, reduce risk and unlock real business value.

Ready to accelerate your AI success? Contact us to discuss how we can help prepare your data for AI applications.