# The Connected Mandate 2026: UK AI Readiness Gap

G2 Research examines how 100 UK business decision-makers experience technology fragmentation, AI readiness, security exposure, governance maturity, and the strategic value of becoming a connected organisation. The report finds that disconnected systems are not just an IT inconvenience: they affect productivity, security, compliance, AI value, customer experience, and the ability to respond quickly to change.

**Analysts:** Molly Burke and Aurora Martina Granata

The research shows a clear readiness gap. Seventy-seven percent of respondents operate in estates where 60% or less of their software is connected. Ninety percent identify security or compliance exposure from fragmented technology. Only 7% can quantify the financial return from AI, while 73% say becoming a connected organisation is business-critical.

## Executive Summary

UK organisations understand that connected systems are becoming a business mandate, but many still operate with fragmented estates, incomplete integration, and uneven AI governance. Respondents describe workflows split across multiple tools, manual handoffs, duplicated effort, weak data visibility, and difficulty proving AI returns. The findings suggest that AI readiness depends less on buying isolated tools and more on creating connected, governed environments where people, data, workflows, and AI can operate together.

## Key Findings

- 77% of respondents said 60% or less of their software estate is connected.
- 90% identified security or compliance exposure connected to fragmented systems.
- Only 7% could quantify AI's financial return.
- 73% said becoming a connected organisation is business-critical.
- Respondents linked disconnected technology to delays, duplication, inconsistent reporting, and difficulty scaling AI use cases.

## Chapter Summaries

### Fragmentation Tax

The report describes the operational cost of disconnected systems. Fragmented estates force employees to move between tools, repeat work, reconcile inconsistent data, and rely on manual workarounds. This fragmentation creates hidden costs across productivity, reporting, collaboration, customer experience, and decision-making.

### Security Seams

Disconnected systems create security and compliance gaps. Respondents describe fragmented access controls, inconsistent visibility, and difficulty ensuring that data is governed consistently across the estate. The report frames integration as a risk-management issue as well as an operational one.

### AI Value and Governance

AI adoption is underway, but measurable value remains difficult for many organisations to prove. Only a small share can quantify AI's financial return, and many respondents describe governance as incomplete. The report connects AI value to data readiness, process clarity, integration, and accountable oversight.

### Connected Mandate

The report argues that becoming a connected organisation is no longer optional. Respondents see connected systems as a foundation for efficiency, resilience, better decision-making, and future competitiveness. Integration becomes the operating layer that allows AI, data, and people to work together effectively.

### Sovereignty Blind Spot

The report also explores awareness of sovereign AI and data control. Respondents show varying levels of understanding about what sovereignty means in practice, including questions of data residency, jurisdiction, governance, and organisational control. This creates a gap between AI ambition and the controls required to use AI responsibly.

## Sponsor and Partner Context

This report was prepared for OneAdvanced by G2 AI Custom Research. The report includes a partner section introducing IQ by OneAdvanced, positioned as an intelligent system of work that connects workflows, teams, data, and AI in a trusted environment.

## Executive perspectives

The report includes perspectives from OneAdvanced leaders including Marko Perisic, Andrew Henderson, Amanda Grant, and Xavier Langlois on reducing complexity, connecting workflows, governing AI, and building trusted foundations for sovereign AI.

## FAQ

### What is a connected organisation?

A connected organisation runs on integrated systems with a single, trusted source of truth that product, customer and enterprise information can move through reliably. That is how 73% of the UK leaders in this study defined it in their own words. A smaller group (14%) defines connectedness through automated end-to-end workflows that enable AI and faster decisions, and 10% emphasise governed, secure and role-appropriate access.

### What is sovereign AI?

Sovereign AI is the ability of an organisation or nation to develop, run and govern AI using infrastructure, data, models and oversight that remain under its own jurisdiction and control, so no outside party can access, constrain or exert legal authority over the system or its data. It goes beyond hosting: a model running on-premises is not sovereign in the full sense if its training pipeline, updates or telemetry route through an external party, or if governance for its use is undefined.

### What percentage of business systems are actually connected at UK organisations?

60% or less, for most organisations. 77% of leaders work in environments where no more than 60% of daily software tools are connected. Fragmentation shows up in daily work too: 59% of respondents who discussed application use said routine workflows span five to nine applications, so teams repeatedly move work, data and context across specialised tools to complete end-to-end processes.

### Why should leaders treat fragmentation as a risk issue rather than only an efficiency problem?

Security and compliance exposure was flagged by 90% of respondents. The leading concerns were data exposure, access-control and identity-management risks, cited by 47% of those who discussed security risk, while 39% pointed to expanded attack surfaces, inconsistent controls and weak monitoring. Fragmentation also carries operational costs: 64% of those discussing costs identified staff time, lost productivity and rework.

### Is AI already delivering value?

Yes, but the value is primarily operational and not yet consistently quantified in financial terms. Among respondents discussing outcomes, 62% cited time savings, productivity or work-quality gains; only 7% reported quantified cost, revenue or profitability effects, and 30% described ROI as limited, absent or unmeasured.

## Methodology

This research draws on 100 in-depth interviews with business decision-makers and business professionals across the United Kingdom, conducted in September 2026 as conversational, open-ended interviews. Interviews ran up to 39 minutes, with an average duration of 30 minutes. Discussions covered system fragmentation and disconnected workflows; operational cost and business impact; security and compliance exposure; what a connected organisation means in practice; AI readiness, barriers, governance, and the role of connected data; transformation priorities; growth outcomes; sovereign AI awareness; and vendor evaluation criteria such as cybersecurity credentials. The open-ended format enabled respondents to describe actual practices rather than choose from preset answers. All data is first-party G2 research.

**Topics covered:** AI Adoption, Systems Integration