Sriram Anand, PhD, global delivery lead, data and AI, Accenture

What level of data maturity do you typically encounter across your client base and what tends to hold this back? 

Most clients have realized the need for an enterprise data platform to generate the optimal value out of their analytical data. Many clients are caught in the middle of the data platform journey because it is a long and sometimes expensive journey and can come in the way of growth initiatives. Clients have understood the need to make curated and transformed data easily available to business stakeholders and enable true data democratization.

What trends are you seeing in terms of the data and analytics resources your clients are demanding from you? 

Clients have realized the nature of the technology and the proliferation of products in the cloud data engineering, analysis, consumption and AI/ML space. The demands on resources have become more specific and deep with a focus on leveraging resources who have depth in individual products and not generalists.

What challenges do you see for data in the year ahead that will have an impact on your clients and on the industry as a whole? 

ChatGPT and the promise of generative AI has intrigued the world and has clients wondering about the applicability in their own areas. However, clients will not be able to move beyond isolated implementations or analysis without the investments on data quality, data governance and a trusted data platform.

How are you tackling the challenge of attracting, nurturing and retaining talent? 

The promise of new and unique applications of data to be used for generative AI, ML and data democratization is very exciting for hands-on technical resources. This aspect is used to encourage talented developers and engineers to excite them on the art of the possible and maintain their level of engagement.