Your Data Isn't 80% of the Problem: Tracing a Myth
The "80% of AI is data prep" figure comes from a 2016 survey of about 80 people, and it is two numbers added together. Here is the trace.
Practical insights on AI automation, operational efficiency, and digital transformation for UK businesses.
The "80% of AI is data prep" figure comes from a 2016 survey of about 80 people, and it is two numbers added together. Here is the trace.
The UK's only official AI buying guidance is from 2020 and written for government. Nine contract terms the ICO makes mandatory, and a badge that misleads.
I counted 2,814 app store reviews of 14 field service platforms. Buyers average 3.33 stars; the engineers made to use it average 1.53. This is that gap.
The cost of error in UK construction is £210,000 per £1m of project value — and £160,000 of it never reaches a cost report. Traced to the primary source.
A pallet moves once; its paperwork gets handled five times. Mapping the admin at each stage of a UK 3PL workflow — and the two places a model must not go.
UK workers lose 31% of the week to admin. This index prices it role by role on ONS ASHE pay: hours lost, cost per person per year, and the gaps I won't fill.
What document extraction actually costs (£1.13 per 1,000 pages for plain OCR), what accuracy to expect by document type, and why no vendor publishes one.
Manufacturing investment fell 7.1% in the year to Q1 2026 while whole-economy investment rose. UK industrial electricity costs 83% more than the European median. Forty statistics on where the productivity gap actually sits, every one linked to a primary source and date-stamped, with a methodology section so you can check the workings.
Bain 2025: without process redesign, companies automate inefficiencies instead of removing them. If your quoting process is broken, AI quotes broken faster. Why 70% of AI projects fail and the five patterns that explain it.