Get ready for a seismic shift in the world of business, as generative AI (GenAI) is poised to transform how companies make decisions and operate. A new report from global research and advisory firm Gartner predicts that a staggering 75% of all new analytics content will leverage GenAI by 2027, ushering in an era of “perceptive and adaptive” analytics.
This monumental shift, according to Georgia O’Callaghan, director and analyst at Gartner, signals a move away from traditional analytical tools that merely assist human decision-making. Instead, GenAI-powered analytics will enable truly dynamic and autonomous decisions, with the potential to reshape everything from enterprise and consumer software to fundamental business processes and models.
A recent Gartner survey, conducted between October and December 2024 with 403 analytics and AI leaders, revealed that over half of the responding organisations are already employing AI tools for automated insights and natural language queries (NLG) in their analytics and AI development. Despite these advancements, the current static nature of analytics often falls short of delivering truly dynamic and automated outcomes.
Enhancing Business Resilience in a Dynamic World
Gartner anticipates that by 2027, augmented analytics capabilities will mature into fully autonomous analytics platforms, independently managing and executing a substantial 20% of business processes. This “perceptive future of analytics” promises a range of benefits, including proactive, collaborative, connected, contextual, and continuous insights.
“Perceptive analytics will leverage AI agents and other GenAI-driven technologies to continuously monitor evolving conditions and discern the target environment, such as market shifts, changes in customer behavior, or disruptions in the supply chain,” O’Callaghan explained. This continuous monitoring will allow for autonomous adjustments in guidance and analysis, fostering a more resilient and responsive analytical infrastructure. As these capabilities gain traction, their potential to reshape business operations and drive growth is set to expand exponentially.
The Perils of Autonomy: Managing “Agent Drift”
However, with great power comes great responsibility. Gartner’s research highlights a critical overarching risk associated with perceptive analytics: an overreliance on autonomous actions without adequate validation. This could lead to unintended negative consequences, reputational damage, and even regulatory scrutiny.
A significant concern is the phenomenon of “agent drift,” where a system’s perceptions and actions gradually deviate from desired outcomes due to evolving data or unforeseen interactions. To counter this inherent issue in AI systems, “guardian agents” are emerging. These specialised agents are designed to monitor and enforce policies and rules, ensuring that AI systems operate within defined guardrails.
O’Callaghan stressed the importance of developing guardian agents as a central priority for data and analytics leaders in new governance initiatives. As agentic and perceptive analytics are expected to become the standard approach for delivering insights across platforms, robust oversight mechanisms will be crucial to harnessing their transformative potential responsibly.
