Hans Zachar, Nutun

It should come as no surprise that businesses are investing a lot of money in GenAI products and projects. According to a new report from Gartner, global GenAI spend is expected to reach $644bn this year, which is nearly 77% more than in 2024. As excited as organisations are to deploy this tech at an enterprise scale, GenAI is still in its infancy. From hallucinations to reasoning challenges, contextual understanding and computational requirements, GenAI is limited, which is why many ambitious projects end up costing more than they should, or simply fail. Another Gartner survey found that, on average, only 48% of AI projects go into production and at least 30% of GenAI projects are abandoned. One of the main reasons for this shortfall is “unclear” business value. Going from potential to profit isn’t clear-cut, even when 75% of executives rank GenAI as a top three strategic priority, as seen in BCG AI’s 2025 Radar.

So what exactly does successful GenAI deployment look like? First, it comes down to data hygiene. McKinsey & Company put it clearly in a recent report: if your data isn’t ready for GenAI, your business isn’t ready for it either. One of the reasons for this is because GenAI doesn’t just look at traditional, structured database systems. It can process unstructured information like emails, video files, images, audio recordings and social media posts. “[It’s] information that doesn’t follow a fixed format,” says Doug Woolley, general manager and vice president, Dell Technologies South Africa. While GenAI can work with this unstructured information, it still requires proper management and, unfortunately, many organisations only discover they have data challenges after implementing GenAI solutions. “You need to clean up your data before moving forward with any projects,” says Woolley.