Global Technology Company
Two People. 100,000 Employees. IDC Quanta. Closing the Gap.
How a decade of IDC partnership, and now IDC Quanta, is helping a global technology company turn a two-person team’s expertise into an advantage the whole company can use.
AI, Data & Automation
Two people, one company of 100,000, no way to keep up
At a global technology company that manufactures, delivers services, and funds serious R&D all at once, a two-person information management team is responsible for getting market intelligence to the right decision-maker before a call gets made without it. “We try and make information available and findable as easily and quickly as possible,” the team’s Head of Information Management said. It works for the top few hundred people in the company.
Everyone else is on their own, often turning to general AI tools that create a new problem: answers got faster, but harder to trust. In one recent case, a colleague’s AI-sourced research came from a firm that couldn’t even spell the company’s name correctly, and verifying it ate up more time than the answer saved.
A relationship built on being told the right question
Long before AI, one of the company’s regional strategy teams held a standing call with IDC analysts every six weeks. “A lot of times what would come back is, no, that’s not the question you should be asking,” she said, a redirection that shaped strategy the team wouldn’t have reached alone.
That history shaped how she evaluates AI research tools now. Where most decline to answer a question outside a subscription, IDC Quanta instead tells her which reports would fill the gap.
“That to me is so much more helpful,” she said. “If we’re working on a key strategic topic, well then let’s buy those two reports, and use IDC Quanta to keep pulling the data out.”
A partner, not just a provider
When the company rolled out AI internally,the number of questions landing on her personally dropped by half, freeing her time for harder problems. She expects IDC Quanta to do the same for her own workflow: fewer questions she has to chase down herself, and more time for the ones that actually need her judgment.
What she’s watching for next is smaller and more practical, like a tool that can recognize an outdated chart she drops in and pull the updated version automatically, so she spends less time hunting and more time using what she already knows is true.
For her, that’s the real value of the relationship.
“I think that’s what you need to be,” she said. “A partner, and not just a provider.”
“That’s where firms like IDC will really excel: having that credibility already, and having that AI be able to answer the question without anyone having to ask, can I trust this number?“
— Head of Information Management