Research Updates from IDC with Tony Olvet, Group VP, Worldwide C-Suite & Digital Business Research

00:00 00:00:03:20 - 00:00:23:14
Speaker 1
Welcome to CIO Leadership Live. I'm Lee Rennick, executive director of CIO communities for CIO.com. And I'm very excited and honored today to introduce and welcome Tony Olvet group vice president, worldwide C-suite and Digital Business Research for IDC. Tony, welcome to the show today. I really appreciate you joining us.
00:00:23:16 - 00:00:25:25
Speaker 2
Thanks for having me, Lee. It's a pleasure.
00:00:25:27 - 00:00:50:02
Speaker 1
Yeah. Normally we get to meet in person sometimes at the CIO Awards, but now we're doing a virtual interview because I was really interested in talking to you about some of the research that IDC puts out. You know, we've developed this series to support the technology leader in their tech and leadership journey. So maybe you could start off by introducing yourself and then maybe telling us a bit about your role at IDC, and perhaps some insights about the research that IDC puts out to support tech leaders.
00:00:50:03 - 00:01:20:17
Speaker 2
Sure, absolutely. so I've been with IDC for a number of years, and I currently cover worldwide, as you said, worldwide C-suite and Digital Business Research. What does that really mean? While the C-suite side of it is understanding what's, priority for the CEO and other CXOs in those executive leadership positions in enterprises globally? the digital Business Research is looking more at profiling, companies and their journey to become a digital business, fueled by AI.
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Speaker 2
So this is such an important topic right now. And a lot of our research centers on that. The topic of AI as the interest is booming in enterprises today.
00:01:29:26 - 00:01:47:15
Speaker 1
Your job must be very rewarding because getting the research, you know, working on it, learning how that could impact on the C-suite and the tech leader. You know, we talked to a lot of CIOs about their elevated role now and how they are and an educational partner of the CEO in the C-suite. And then all businesses really are digital at this point.
00:01:47:15 - 00:02:11:20
Speaker 1
I mean, it's very hard not to be. So. I'm really excited to have this opportunity to speak to you today. Thank you so much for being here and for sharing with us. And so, you know, I did do talk to a lot of CIOs and CIO leadership live, both in the UK, the US and Canada. tech leaders are really talking about how gen AI so far has impacted business teams and productivity.
00:02:11:22 - 00:02:32:23
Speaker 1
Productivity seems to be the main word there that I'm hearing. You know, a lot of CIOs saying we're building out internal productivity. We're not quite customer facing, external customer facing yet, but we're working on it. And so, as I mentioned, I'm excited to have you on the show today because, IDC just released the 2024 Gen I use Case Survey special report.
00:02:32:25 - 00:02:40:13
Speaker 1
It was just published. You gave me a sneak peek into about 40 pages of it. So I'd love to learn a little bit more about the report.
00:02:40:15 - 00:03:02:14
Speaker 2
Sure. Yeah, it's, it's a great study, and it starts by roll. If we roll back to the beginning of the year, when there was so much interest in generative AI in enterprises, we asked our analyst teams internally, first at IDC, to develop a set of taxonomies or definitions of what are the potential use cases in enterprise across business functions.
00:03:02:14 - 00:03:47:19
Speaker 2
So we actually had 13 taxonomy reports across the different business functions. So think of finance or HR or marketing or even software development. So those taxonomies were great about the art of what's possible around gen AI. And those analyst teams, went really deep. What we then did is take those definitions of the 250 or so use cases and, and, and took that to a enterprise survey of over 30, 100 enterprises globally to understand where those companies were on their adoption of these potential Genii use cases, or even, you know, how far down the path they've gone and what are the business outcomes they're expecting?
00:03:47:21 - 00:04:12:11
Speaker 2
What are the measures and metrics? They care about, what they're spending on, and even the approach, are they going to build versus BI, or some combination of what we call compose? So, a very timely and important study that we think will be valuable to both, you know, CIOs and end users, but also vendors looking to support them in their journey to become an AI field business.
00:04:12:13 - 00:04:29:06
Speaker 1
Yeah. And it's really interesting that the, you know, the insights I got just from the summary that you sent over, especially around those types of things. Yeah. For any of the vendors listening in here, you know, there's definitely some great insights as to what the CIOs and the tech leaders in the C-suite are thinking about how to roll this out.
00:04:29:08 - 00:04:50:29
Speaker 1
I know Meredith well, and who's our chief research officer? She was at the CIO 100 in the US and did a really great presentation on the research to date, you know, around sort of the AI scramble. And now in 25 and 20, 20, 26, looking at that Gen, I have it. So companies are really going to be, you know, ensuring that they pivot to to build out those efficiencies and productivity.
00:04:50:29 - 00:05:04:16
Speaker 1
So, I appreciate you sharing about the report itself on that. There are several key findings with the research report. Could you take us maybe through the top 3 or 4 research findings that you could share with our listeners and our audience?
00:05:04:19 - 00:05:33:09
Speaker 2
Sure. I'd be happy to. You know, first, we found that really, organizations are enthusiastically embracing our use cases. And one thing that was really different about this study versus a lot of other surveys out there that look at sort of the top level organizational perspective, maybe looking just at Copilots and how they're deployed. This one, we actually went down to the individual business units and asked about use cases that pertain to their departments.
00:05:33:09 - 00:06:02:21
Speaker 2
So we were talking to knowledgeable respondents that, say in finance or in operations about what they care about and what they're planning to implement in the next 18 months or beyond. And so we found adoption plans were very enthusiastic. You know, maybe, work in progress for many organizations, but definitely a lot of enthusiasm. Second, across all the use cases, efficiency and growth were the most frequently mentioned business benefits.
00:06:02:21 - 00:06:33:09
Speaker 2
We look at business benefits or outcomes through a lens of 12 different, areas for improvement. so efficiency or productivity that tended to be the most common mentioned benefit in back office and technology functions. But in the front office, like customer service, marketing and sales, the most, you know, common expected business benefit was revenue growth. So you do see that both internal and external perspective around generative AI.
00:06:33:11 - 00:07:04:00
Speaker 2
And I think that's important to recognize. It's not just one thing for one organization. It really depends on the the funding department and where their goals are to become a more advanced digital I field business. another key finding is we asked about the different data inputs or data types, because generally AI can be, you know, working from a basis of unstructured data, text, video, code, images and so forth.
00:07:04:03 - 00:07:33:17
Speaker 2
A multimodal approach was evident to be the most common approach of organizations that we talked to. So an adoption strategy for most enterprises is also going to be to compose their gen AI model, which means that, yeah, they might build some components of it or they might buy, but essentially it's a taking a combination. And so, if you're just using a public large language model, what's the differentiation for you in your business or in your company?
00:07:33:24 - 00:07:56:15
Speaker 2
You may need to, enhance that by training or doing further inferencing with your own IP or your own data set. So I think that compose approach to generative AI is going to be the most common. And that's what the survey showed. And then finally in terms of spending, you know, IDC has published forecasts, in the last few weeks around the growth of AI and Genii in particular.
00:07:56:17 - 00:08:17:15
Speaker 2
And our survey also showed that growth is expected. So spending is increasing a year over year from this year to next. So budgets are, you know, the C-suite and line of business teams are telling us budgets are increasing around generative AI. And I know there's a lot of questions about what's the return on investment and where where are the business benefits.
00:08:17:17 - 00:08:27:10
Speaker 2
Well, you know, our survey is telling us that organizations are seeing those benefits and are expecting to increase their spending on generative AI in 2025.
00:08:27:12 - 00:08:51:00
Speaker 1
Wow. Fantastic. Thank you for sharing those findings. It aligns really well with some of the CIOs that I was speaking to at the CIO 100, and then I and then I chat with, you know, they're talking about just the impact it has on the business, with the data, you know, having, you know, one what one CIO told me they have, you know, 200,000 different inquiries like from customers.
00:08:51:00 - 00:09:19:17
Speaker 1
And that usually would take weeks to, you know, go through and sort. And it literally took it down to, I think hours, you know, hours. So just that idea of productivity, but then saving on the output of, of the finance aspect of it too. That sounds like a very great report. And we'll make sure we include a link in the post, for those who want to, you know, click on and see all of our IDC research, what we have to offer to support the CIO and the C-suite in their leadership journey.
00:09:19:19 - 00:09:33:08
Speaker 1
All right. So we're heading into we're recording this in November. We're heading into 2025. Tony, I'd love to hear any key strategies or thoughts you have about Gen AI and its impact on business for 2025 and beyond.
00:09:33:15 - 00:09:57:18
Speaker 2
Sure. I'll leave you with, three things. One is, you know, there are still some challenges. Not everyone's in that advanced kind of mode of adopting and understanding how to implement in their own business. So organizations to really think of a strategic approach and a platform first, a unified platform approach. You know, Genii is one of those, you know, technologies that help the general public by storm.
00:09:57:18 - 00:10:18:23
Speaker 2
And it was almost pushed from the C-suite down to organizations to say, hey, what are we going to do with this? So that caused that whole, genie scramble that Meredith Whalen talked about at this, you know, the CIO summit and awards. And, right now, organizations need to say, okay, we need some structure around this. And having that strategic platform approach is first.
00:10:18:23 - 00:10:43:29
Speaker 2
Second, I think, is really thinking about a portfolio approach rather than a single point of least use case approach. I think there's business benefit and scaling and, economies of scale and scope by looking at a set of use cases rather than one at a time within a team or across department procure to pay, which involves finance as well as a procurement department.
00:10:44:06 - 00:11:14:26
Speaker 2
So that portfolio approach is is very smart. And also, you know, the third thing that I would suggest is the whole responsible AI aspect of this is extremely important. We're at a seminal moment in the industry, and there's a lot of question marks around what AI is going to do for, business, but also for society at large and how that that relationship between the vendor, the enterprise that's using it and their end customers building trust.
00:11:14:26 - 00:11:38:15
Speaker 2
And it all starts with responsible AI. So taking an ethical approach, being transparent, being accountable and keeping the human involved in this, the black box approach is not going to build trust in being, open and transparent and having that responsible AI approach loud and clear is extremely important going into 2025.
00:11:38:18 - 00:11:50:21
Speaker 1
Thank you so much. Three really great points, and I appreciate you so much sharing those with me and just providing some insights into our audience listening in today. And I really appreciate you joining me here today. Tony, thank you so much.
00:11:50:23 - 00:11:53:09
Speaker 2
Oh, thank you for having me. Thanks a lot, Lee.
00:11:53:12 - 00:11:58:00
Speaker 1
Thanks again. And if you're interested in viewing this or other videos, hop on over to cio.com.