CDOs are facing an uphill battle with upskilling and data management

Europe is rushing to adopt AI, but many organizations don't trust their data and almost all say staff need more training.

Findings from Informatica’s annual CDO Insights study show almost eight-in-ten businesses will have adopted generative AI by the end of this quarter, and 68% will have started agentic AI pilots.

Businesses in the UK are moving at a slower pace, however, with just 61% planning to introduce agentic AI.

CDOs are hoping that AI will improve business decision-making and enhance employee collaboration, both cited by 32%, while 28% are looking to optimize internal processes and 27% to enhance customer experience and loyalty.

However, there's a big paradox when it comes to trust. While data leaders believe that 61% of employees - 52% in the UK - trust ‘most’ or ‘all’ of the data that their organizations are using for AI, 96% say that staff need more training in AI or data literacy to use the technology responsibly.

"Although employees generally trust the data used for AI, many are lacking in data and AI literacy skills, and organizations lack underlying AI governance structures for achieving the responsible and ethical outcomes they desire," said Krish Vitaldevara, chief product officer at Informatica from Salesforce.

This poses significant risk exposure and hurts confidence in AI initiatives."

Most European businesses (55%) are opting to buy vendor-supplied agents, though the figure is just 44% for UK firms. Meanwhile, 45% of European organizations, and 55% in the UK, are developing and/or managing agents in-house. Of these, 21% are choosing to build using no- or low-code platforms.

Too much, too fast

Notably, Informatica warned enterprises may be moving too fast, with more than three-quarters of respondents saying their company’s AI visibility and governance has not kept pace with employee use of AI technology.

When it comes to AI literacy, data leaders believe that the majority of employees trust ‘most’ or ‘all’ of the data that their organizations are using for AI. However, 96% reckon employees need more data or AI literacy training in order to use AI or its outputs responsibly.

There is, though, money to deal with these issues: 85% of European businesses are increasing their data management investments in 2026, with 23% expecting to significantly increase their spend.

The top drivers for this are upskilling employees to improve data and AI fluency, improving data privacy and security, and enhancing data and AI governance, all cited by 44%. In the UK, 49% are planning to invest in data literacy.

For 57% of European data leaders and 60% of UK leaders, poor data reliability is delaying moving generative AI initiatives from pilot to production. Half are ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ concerned that new AI pilots will move forward without addressing the data reliability problems evident in previous initiatives.

Other major blockers include security concerns, lack of agentic AI expertise, observability issues, insufficient tools for managing AI agents, and lack of safety guardrails.

Data reliability problems persist

When it comes to dealing with data reliability, 58% of organizations are improving workflows around data/AI, and 56% are investing in data and metadata collection and management.

More than half (55%) are increasing the frequency of data checks while a similar number (54%) of respondents said they are increasing investments in data quality.

"Encouragingly, there are early signs of maturity in how organisations approach AI and agentic systems”, said Emilio Valdés, SVP sales international, Informatica from Salesforce.

"Data leaders are recognizing the risk and increasing investment in data governance and compliance foundations."

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