Your AI strategy is doomed if you’re still obsessing over unstructured data
The recent State of Martech 2025 report claims “unstructured data” is preventing businesses from AI success. David Brudenell, executive director of Decidr, has some other ideas.
Australian businesses are still wasting millions on AI tools that promise to solve decades-old data problems.
Worse still, it means they’re missing the fundamental structural shift that could deliver an actual competitive advantage. The recent State of Martech 2025 report captures this perfectly: 108 pages of handwringing claiming “unstructured data” is what’s holding businesses back from AI success. It’s a persistent, convenient narrative, and it’s blocking businesses from becoming the real gamechangers AI can facilitate.
The fixation on unstructured data isn’t new. For over a decade, we’ve been promised that the next wave of technology would finally help us wrangle emails, call transcripts, social posts, and customer feedback into submission. Like the persistent low hum of a fluorescent light in an office no one quite brings themselves to renovate, this problem murmurs on. The vendors, as ever, assure us they are on the brink of a breakthrough.
