Fewer than half of the insights that analytics agents generate lead to business improvement, according to a report from Insights, MIT Technology Review's custom content arm. The report says 48% of agent insights at the surveyed companies lead to actions that improve the business, up from 37% a year earlier.
The report identifies a lack of business context as the top reason agent insights fall short, cited by 55% of surveyed executives. Fragmented or inaccessible data is the second major factor, cited by 45%. The report also says 52% of surveyed organizations generate more insights than they can properly evaluate, and fewer than a quarter can evaluate all agent insights.
A small group the report calls "insight leaders" performs better. The report says more than 70% of their agent insights lead to business-improving actions. It says the gap is widest for prescriptive insights, the recommendations that agents use to trigger actions.
To improve results, surveyed companies are prioritizing stronger AI and data governance (60%) and adding a semantic layer to their data architecture (45%). The report says the experts it interviewed consider the semantic layer crucial for high-performing agents.