Research from martech companies continues to highlight how a lack of training could prevent the effective adoption of AI-powered tools within marketing teams.
Dotdigital CMO Tracking includes a survey of 750 marketing executives in the UK, US and Australia, all of whom said they were using AI, largely, the report says, because martech vendors have been quick to integrate the technology into their platforms.
Yet despite this widespread adoption by businesses (nearly half of the sample cited AI-powered marketing automation as a top investment priority), a third said they felt their teams were not “skilled or confident enough to use AI tools effectively.”
More than a quarter of respondents (28%) said this lack of understanding of platforms and tools was their main concern.
The report refers to 2023 World Economic Forum workwho quotes himself Search on Korn Ferry The United States is looking at potential talent shortages ahead, stating that “technical limitations are no longer the primary barrier to realizing the impact of many emerging and disruptive technologies,” but rather “the limited ability to increase the supply of skilled talent to meet the demand for these technologies.”
Similar warnings were recently issued by the EU in the European Commission’s latest update on its Digital Decade initiative, which began in 2021 and set a series of targets for 2030 on citizens’ digital skills and business capabilities. The Commission’s analysis notes that “the collective efforts of Member States will not match the EU’s level of ambition”, with gaps identified “notably in the areas of digital skills, high-quality connectivity, adoption of AI and data analytics by businesses, semiconductor production and start-up ecosystems”.
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Some of the most striking findings about AI in martech research come from a Salesforce survey conducted in late 2023. The survey, “The Promises and Pitfalls of AI at Work,” found that:
- 62% of office workers said they don’t think they have the skills to use generative AI effectively and safely.
- 67% of office workers said they expect employers to offer generative AI training.
- 69% of office workers say they have not received such training.
The report also links the issue of AI tool adoption to the fact that “the majority of companies have not communicated to employees whether and how AI can be used.” Only 21% of respondents to the Salesforce study said their company had provided approved tools or programs, despite this being ranked as the top factor among office workers for effective and safe use of generative AI.
This corporate inertia has led to 55% of office workers using unapproved tools and 40% using tools that are explicitly prohibited. The rise of so-called “shadow IT” raises a whole new set of questions around data security and ethics.
Amid all this uncertainty and much debate about whether the hype around genAI in the market is justified, Salesforce makes a compelling case for the maturation of enterprise AI in the introduction to its recent report. AI Trends Report. It lists key success factors focused on trust, including “data security, data privacy, safety, and ethical safeguards,” as well as the need to focus on “high-impact use cases that address bottlenecks, pain points, and performance improvement opportunities.” The report highlights “turnkey AI use cases” as the fastest, lowest-risk path to understanding the automation opportunity, often using CRM data as a starting point.
However, the report goes on to say that upskilling a workforce for AI is “not a one-off exercise, but rather a continuous cycle of learning as AI evolves.”
The question for marketers may be whether they can afford to invest in this new AI-powered marketing technology without also investing in data and AI literacy through on-the-job training.
