AI projects are being hampered by a lack of skills, data governance challenges, and trust issues, with many projects getting stuck in planning stages, according to the latest survey from analytics and data integration firm Qlik.

In a survey of 4,200 C-Suite executives and AI decision makers, Qlik found that despite 88% agreeing AI is now fundamental to success, it is becoming harder for them to realise their AI ambitions.

The data shows that few AI projects are making it out of the planning stage to completion or implementation, and many are being scrapped entirely. 

In fact, 20% of global businesses said they had between fifty and a hundred AI projects stuck in the scoping or planning stages, and another 20% reported having up to fifty projects progress to planning or beyond, only to have to pause or cancel them entirely. 

Given the struggle to bring AI projects to fruition, many AI decision makers (74%) said they now see the value in ‘ready-made’ AI solutions as a good foundation to enhance AI development in their organisations.

According to the survey, multiple factors are slowing down or blocking these AI projects, including a lack of skills to develop AI (23%), or roll out AI once developed (22%), while data governance challenges (23%), budget constraints (21%), and a lack of trusted data (21%) were also major concerns.

Whilst there is an overwhelming agreement around the need for AI, with almost all respondents (95%) saying they know what types of AI could be used in their business, trust from elsewhere in the business appears to be holding some companies back.

Over a third (37%) of AI decision makers say their senior managers lack trust in AI, and 42% feel less senior employees don’t trust the technology, while a fifth (21%) believed their customers don’t trust AI either.

For 61% of respondents, that lack of trust has led their organisation to significantly reduce their investments into AI, although three-quarters (74%) of executives said they are still looking to promote the benefits of the technology within their organisation, and to their customers.

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To further promote the adoption of AI technology, 76% said their industries need to be better at nurturing and upskilling staff for AI, and 75% think their government needs to provide more funding and training in AI.

“Business leaders know the value of AI, but they face a multitude of barriers that prevent them from moving from proof of concept to value creating deployment of the technology,” said James Fisher, chief strategy officer at Qlik. 

“The first step to creating an AI strategy is to identify a clear use case, with defined goals and measures of success, and use this to identify the skills, resources and data needed to support it at scale. In doing so you start to build trust and win management buy-in to help you succeed.”