Singapore, September 10, 2025 — Remember Blockbuster? Once a giant, now a cautionary tale. The rise of instant, on-demand content changed everything. Those who caught the wave rode it. The rest were left behind. No matter how big you are, if you ignore the technology shifts, you risk becoming irrelevant.
Today, the same shift is happening again — with AI. Yes, it’s a buzzword we hear all the time. But AI is already having a massive impact that could spell disaster for companies that don’t have their enterprise data ready.
Most Asia Pacific leaders already feel the heat, with about 70% saying AI is going to disrupt their business models in the next 18 months. The benefits are huge: faster decisions, smarter operations, realignment of resources, real-time data and deeper customer insights. But here’s the catch—without clean, trusted, secure and organised data, AI won’t help; it’ll hurt.
Know Your Data. Know Your Business
As businesses across Asia Pacific navigate rising costs and ongoing talent shortages, resilience is top of mind. With some reports reporting closures up to 5% in 2025, leaders with clear, data-driven strategies will be better positioned to adapt and grow.
Staying ahead means zooming out to watch the market and zooming in to sharpen how you run. But business clarity needs reliable data. That’s where many stumble, especially with AI, where 52% of leaders struggle with data quality — battling issues of error, bias, irrelevance, and timeliness. That’s like steering through a storm with a cracked compass. If you can’t trust your data, you can’t trust your AI — and you risk being outpaced, outsmarted, and outdated.
AI has the power to turn noise into actionable insight, but that starts with a solid data foundation. In the current climate, AI ready enterprise data isn’t optional. It’s a must-have for any leader trying to make smart decisions and stay ahead.
You’re Sitting on Gold; Don’t Let It Go to Waste
For many companies in Asia Pacific—from lean SMEs to sprawling enterprises—data often feels messy, solid, outdated, scattered, hard to share and overwhelming. The challenges are different, but the outcome is the same: disconnected information that creates digital clutter instead of actionable insight. Many are juggling too many potential use cases with too few resources, with 71% of gen AI early adopters agreeing they have more potential use cases than they can fund and over half struggling to prioritise what really moves the needle. When data is unclear, decisions become a gamble.
SMEs may feel especially under-equipped, lacking the in-house expertise or resources to build strong data foundations. According to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the biggest barriers to digital transformation in the region include a lack of tech know-how (82.7%), a shortage of digital talent (81.8%), and limited data and analysis capabilities (71.8%).
Meanwhile, larger enterprises often grapple with data sprawled across systems, markets, and teams — leading to silos, duplication, and a lack of standardisation. Whether you’re a small team in Singapore or a multinational operating across Asia Pacific, the message is the same: your data is valuable, but only if it’s unified, trusted, and ready to use.
Rushing into AI without first sorting out your data is like trying to sprint before you can walk. It’s no surprise that one in five AI projects in Asia Pacific ends up failing due to poor data quality, inherent bias, and complex engineering processes. A solid, unified data foundation isn’t just helpful — it’s essential.
Without it, AI will become more of a liability than an advantage. It can produce confident-sounding nonsense, known as hallucinations, and even repeat harmful biases. Without the right data, your AI won’t just miss the mark—it can skew decisions and erode trust, wasting your time and money chasing insights that were never reliable to begin with.
Smart AI Starts with Smart Data
The best insights from AI aren’t generic. It’s built on your organisation’s data, tuned to your customers and market. Think of an eCommerce platform using AI to adjust delivery routes based on traffic and stock levels, so orders arrive faster and cheaper, or a bubble tea shop refreshing its menu as matcha trends soar among Gen Zs. These are smart moves, powered by smart data.
But tailoring AI to your business isn’t simple. You need to break down data silos, set standards, and know the quality of your data. And that’s where companies get stuck. Only 11% of early adopters worldwide say their unstructured data is ready for AI model training. Think emails, PDFs, chat logs, images and videos. They don’t fit neatly in a spreadsheet but hold powerful insights if you know how to use them well. This starts with the behind-the-scenes work of prepping your data. That’s why the right data platforms and partners matter — they help businesses organise, govern, and activate their data, laying the groundwork for effective AI.
Start Small, But Start Now
Fixing messy data can feel overwhelming — as if it requires a full team of engineers and analysts just to make sense of it. But that’s not the case. You don’t need an army — you need a plan.
AI isn’t new. What’s new is how accessible it’s become. Tools have become smarter, partners are more experienced, and ecosystems are emerging to help businesses clean up data and put it to work — without needing to rip everything out.
Getting started still takes work. But the leap from walking to sprinting is shorter than you think. You don’t need perfection — just the first step.
Attributed to: Jon Robertson, Snowflake’s President for Asia Pacific & Japan
