UK bosses plan major data strategy overhaul in 2025

The rise of data-driven strategies is set to fuel a major overhaul of brand owners’ tech and data practices, with nearly three-fifths (58%) of C-suite leaders planning to streamline how they access and use business information – including customer data – in the year ahead.

According to a new from data streaming platform Confluent, which surveyed 200 C-level executives in the UK, four-fifths (80%) of companies now have a clearly defined data strategy in place yet two-fifths (43%) say their organisations still cannot capitalise on fast-moving insights and trends.

The majority of executives (51%) also cannot access data in real-time, with 43% saying this is slowing down their decision making. As a result, many C-level leaders are pushing for an overhaul of how IT data is used and made available across their organisations.

Across the C-suite, 53% of CTOs want to overhaul their current approach to data, as do 50% of CFOs and 57% of CEOs.

To aid with this overhaul, UK businesses are rethinking how they process and store data. Instead of using batch processing, three-quarters (77%) are now investing or planning to invest in ‘data streaming’, allowing data to be processed, analysed and accessed in real-time.

Nearly all (96%) of those surveyed said this type of real-time data streaming will be an ‘important’ or ‘essential’ part of their organisation’s decision making strategy in the year ahead.

Of those who have already switched from batch processing to streaming, three-quarters (77%) say the speed of major business projects has increased, while a similar proportion (78%) say day-to-day tasks are finished faster.

Confluent senior vice-president of EMEA Richard Timperlake said: “While it’s great to see that so many business leaders have a clearly defined data strategy in place, this strategy is often built on the back of legacy systems, attempting to work with what’s there, rather than building something new.

“For businesses of all sizes, these legacy systems are becoming a growing concern, blocking access to data and slowing business decision making.

“To overcome this, it’s great to see so many business leaders pushing their tech teams to overhaul legacy structures and existing data strategies. With so many decisions being made in real-time the days of slow-moving batch processing are over.

“Businesses need real-time data, delivered straight to the teams, departments, and decision makers that need it most. Data streaming is already making that possible for 80% of the top Fortune 100 companies, and we expect to see investment in this technology continuing to rise over the coming 12 months.”