IBM Korea President: "In the AI Era, Data Strategy Determines the Future of Companies"

Soojung Lee Holds First Press Briefing with Domestic Media
Points Out Lack of AI Data Strategies Among Companies
"Data Is a Core Asset That Drives Results, Not Just a Record"

Although the era of artificial intelligence (AI) has arrived, an analysis shows that only 1% of the data held by companies is actually utilized in the AI field. The lack of a data strategy has been identified as a key obstacle to successful AI adoption, and it has been suggested that data utilization should be considered a management strategy crucial to a company's survival.

At a press briefing held on December 9 at the IBM Korea office in IFC Yeouido, Seoul, Soojung Lee, President of IBM Korea, stated, "AI is already a symbol of corporate innovation, but most companies are still at the experimental stage." She diagnosed, "This is due to the absence of a data strategy to properly leverage what is arguably the most important asset companies possess-their unique enterprise data." This was Lee's first meeting with domestic media. On this day, IBM shared its AI strategy through a media open house event.

Soojung Lee, President of IBM Korea, held her first press briefing on the morning of the 9th at the IBM Korea office in IFC Yeouido, Seoul, introducing the 'Data Strategy that Determines AI Performance.' Photo by Heejun Jang

President Lee pointed out that, according to IBM's research, the factor CEOs considered most important for realizing the value of generative AI was "utilizing unique enterprise data." However, she noted, "In reality, only about 1% of enterprise data is being used for AI, and only 13% of respondents said they had the data capabilities to support AI-driven revenue generation." This indicates a significant gap between awareness of the importance of data strategy and its actual implementation.

In the IBM survey, corporate data officers cited several challenges: "AI projects are delayed due to complex data," "Ensuring data quality, consistency, and regulatory compliance across multiple departments is an endless task," "Real-time data is needed for rapid decision-making, but data fragmentation makes access difficult," and "Time spent organizing and preparing scattered data from various sources reduces the time available to focus on building AI models."

The strategy proposed by IBM is as follows: The key is to transform data from a mere record into a core asset that drives business outcomes. President Lee emphasized, "It is important to establish ways to utilize unstructured data, which accounts for up to 90% of corporate data, and to embed the strategy company-wide through performance indicators for data utilization."

She particularly stressed that such a strategy should not stop at "data collection." Enterprise-wide collaboration among key decision-makers is needed to utilize data in line with the strategy. Lee explained that a data strategy must be linked to business objectives and utilized according to a proactively established performance measurement system in order to deliver results.

Soojung Lee, President of IBM Korea, held her first press briefing on the morning of the 9th at the IBM Korea office in IFC Yeouido, Seoul, introducing the "Data Strategy That Determines AI Performance." Photo by Heejun Jang

Additionally, Hong Kyupyo, Technical Sales Director of the Data Platform Division at IBM Korea, presented approaches to "data for AI," including data quality, data governance, data integration, and unstructured data management. He emphasized, "It is essential to increase the usability of unstructured data while also not overlooking governance issues such as security."

Meanwhile, IBM is providing data integration solutions through "watsonx.data," part of its watsonx product suite for AI. The company has strengthened its roadmap to enhance enterprise data utilization capabilities, including the acquisition of DataStax, known for its strengths in large-scale data processing and high-speed search technology, in June of this year.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.