In a time of exponential change, accelerating technological advancement, and growing digitization, data is fast becoming the lifeblood of modern organizations and legal departments. Going forward, it will also be a fundamental cornerstone of business growth and transformation, and key driver of competitive advantage, with more than eight in ten CEOs now wanting their enterprises to be more data-driven. Moreover, at the speed the commercial world and modern legal departments now move, the era of real-time decisioning, multi-cloud optimization, and predictive business strategies is suddenly upon us. Finding ways to innovate and evolve at pace with tomorrow's fast-shifting marketplace will only require companies and law industry leaders to fundamentally rethink how they architect IT infrastructures and online applications even further to better facilitate the flow of information throughout their enterprise in coming years.

Noting this, the overwhelming majority of organizations are now actively investing in data- and artificial intelligence (AI)-focused initiatives. But at the same time, less than a quarter of Fortune 1000 companies currently believe that their company has actually risen to the challenge and achieved this goal. That's because finding more effective ways to collect, store, and secure data is just a starting point for businesses hoping to keep pace with new market trends, adapt to changing customer habits, and stay one step ahead of the competition today. In fact, making successful use of data also requires you and your colleagues to be able to understand and leverage this information in context. This takes deliberate planning and engineering to streamline access to information to your workforce and identify more effective ways to integrate data flows throughout your operations.