AI Knowledge Maturity Assessment
Is your knowledge foundation ready for AI?
Most enterprises are pouring money into AI — but the payoff is landing unevenly. In 8 quick questions, benchmark your knowledge foundation against 520 enterprises and get the classification and roadmap that separate the leaders.
improvement for the leaders
Leaders don’t just feel more advanced — their numbers move ~85% more
IDC and eGain studied 520 enterprises and scored each on a behavior-based knowledge-maturity index. The most capable — the top tier — reported roughly 85% more annual improvement than the least capable, across the metrics that matter most:
- Customer satisfaction
- First-contact resolution
- Ticket deflection
- Cost & efficiency
- Time-to-competency
- Answer accuracy
- AI-readiness
Capability isn’t a vanity score — it tracks straight to results, and it rises at every step of the curve, not just at the top.
Three drivers — and leaders build all three
The study breaks knowledge maturity into three dimensions. Technology and process separate the leaders the most, but the three compound — a platform with no automation, or automation with no governance, leaves the return on the table. This assessment scores you on all three.
Who owns knowledge, and how it’s governed
Central mandate, clear ownership, and knowledge-engineering skills. Leaders centralize KM and move it into the CIO/CAIO organization — 55% centrally mandate it, vs 11% of laggards.
One platform, AI on trusted knowledge
A single operational source of truth that people and AI both draw on. 50% of leaders run a unified platform fully operational, vs 5% of laggards.
Automated, and wired into every function
Automating the knowledge lifecycle and integrating it across departments. 53% of leaders automate the majority of KM processes, vs 6% of laggards.
Three minutes in, a clear picture out
Your maturity classification
Where you land on the behavior-based index that predicts ~85% more business impact for the top tier — Foundational, Scaling, or AI-Ready Leader.
Your foundation profile
Your score across the three dimensions that separate leaders from laggards — people & structure, technology, and process — benchmarked against the market.
A personalized roadmap
The specific, highest-impact moves to make next — drawn from what the leaders in the study actually did differently.
Data model: IDC × eGain Knowledge Management Maturity Study, 2026 (n = 520)
People & structure
How your knowledge function is organized, governed, and staffed.
See your results & action plan
Tell us where to send your report, and see your results right away.
Each bar = the average of respondents’ reported year-over-year change across 13 KM performance metrics (survey question BM04: CSAT/NPS, first-contact resolution, average handle time, ticket deflection, answer accuracy, AI hallucination rate, time-to-competency, KB coverage, cost & operational efficiency, compliance readiness, AI-readiness, employee engagement, decision quality), grouped by knowledge-capability quintile · IDC × eGain, n = 520.
The leaders aren’t working harder — they’ve built the same five things
Capability is built in a sequence — and AI pays off at the top
Structuring content is the base of the curve. Movement comes from connecting it, automating the work around it, and activating AI on top — each step compounds the last.
The moves that close your biggest gaps
Prioritized by impact and by the size of your gap. Each one closes a capability the leaders already have — and each is a step up the ROI curve above.
Turn this roadmap into results
eGain's AI Knowledge Hub gives your people, customers, and AI one trusted, governed source of knowledge — the foundation behind every move above. See what your plan looks like in practice.
Talk to an eGain advisorClassification uses the behavior-based maturity index from the IDC × eGain Knowledge Management Maturity Study, 2026 (n = 520).
