IDC WHITE PAPER | SPONSORED BY EGAIN

The Knowledge Foundation That Unlocks Enterprise AI Success

New IDC research of 520 organizations reveals why AI pays off for some enterprises and stalls for others, and what the leaders built first.

IDC WHITE PAPER | SPONSORED BY EGAIN

95%

of organizations are already evaluating, piloting, or running AI in their knowledge management processes.

10x

Leaders are 10 times as likely to run a fully operational, unified KM platform (50% vs. 5% of laggards).

94%

of leaders have automated more than half of their KM processes, compared with 36% of laggards.

improvement reported by leaders on every business impact metric, from ticket deflection to CSAT.

Source: IDC and eGain, Knowledge Management Maturity Study, July 2026 (n = 520). Leaders are the top 20% on IDC’s KM maturity scale; laggards are the bottom 40%.

AI success doesn’t hinge on the model. It hinges on the knowledge underneath it.

Nearly every enterprise is experimenting with AI in knowledge management. Far fewer are running it at scale or seeing a return. IDC scored 520 organizations on a knowledge management maturity scale spanning technology, process, and people, then compared the leaders with the laggards.

The gap is wide, and it widens over time. This white paper shows what separates the organizations where AI pays off, and the order in which to build the foundation that gets you there.

What you’ll learn

The three pillars of a knowledge foundation: How technology, process, and people and structure work together, and why a unified platform comes first
Where leaders pull ahead with AI: Why leaders run RAG, knowledge graphs, agentic AI, and multimodal AI at scale at up to 18x the rate of laggards
The ROI curve: How the return on KM shifts from efficiency and risk reduction to agility, innovation, and revenue growth as maturity rises
The build sequence: The four stages from structured to AI activated, and the plateau to avoid
Where to invest first: The three capabilities that move the widest range of business metrics
Who owns it and how to measure it: Why ownership is moving to the CIO, CTO, and Chief AI Officer, and the AI-era metrics leaders track

“Strategically, we look to bring all the knowledge data onto a single platform so that we can build a RAG for better use of AI.”

Director, Financial Services, IDC survey respondent

Who should read this white paper

CIOs, CTOs, and Chief AI Officers responsible for scaling enterprise AI
Heads of customer service, CX, and contact centers
Knowledge management and AI KnowledgeOps leaders
Digital transformation leaders building the business case for AI

INSIDE THE REPORT

The knowledge foundation is built in sequence

IDC found four stages, each with a higher average business gain than the last. Skip one, and AI inherits the gap. The white paper shows the payoff at every stage.

Stage 1

Structured

Consistent taxonomy and a single repository

Stage 2

Connected

A unified platform with context that spans systems

Stage 3

Automated

KM processes integrated and automated across functions

Stage 4

AI activated

AI and agents running on trusted knowledge

Get the full findings

About the IDC analyst

Amy Machado

Research Director, Content and Knowledge Discovery Strategies, IDC

Amy covers the content and unstructured data supply chain and its impact on mission-critical operations, including enterprise content management, knowledge discovery, knowledge management, and intelligent document processing.