This BoomData 2026 Peer Perspectives Report is a compilation of insights from six Executive Roundtable events we held in NSW and VIC in 2025 and 2026 with 50+ CIOs, CFOs and Heads of Data for businesses ranging from $30 billion turnover to over $1 billion turnover across a range of industries. The report reveals how these leaders are actually tackling data and analytics, key challenges they’re facing and how to overcome them along with a guide to best practice. It is a distillation of candid discussions between practitioners. All organisations and individuals are anonymised.
Across the roundtable events one message came through with striking consistency that is captured in this 2026 Peer Perspectives Report: Australian businesses know they have a data problem. Most are somewhere on the journey toward fixing it, but the majority are earlier in that journey than they would like to be. The barriers are rarely technological. The platforms available to businesses today are more accessible and more capable than they have ever been. What holds organisations back is a more human set of problems: data that isn’t trusted, analytics capability that doesn’t match ambition, governance that has been deferred too long, skills that are scarce and business cases that struggle to unlock board approval. At the same time, the urgency is high as boards & executive teams are recognising the importance of trusted data to support their AI strategies.
In particular the 2026 Peer Perspectives Report examines:
- Where businesses sit in their data & analytics journey and why
- Common barriers and challenges businesses are facing
- The gap between AI ambition and data team readiness – less than 1 in 20 businesses were AI-ready
- Characteristics of the businesses making the most data & analytics progress
- How they’re using Microsoft Fabric, Snowflake & Databricks
- What best practice looks like in data management, analytics, governance and more
- Key findings and observations to benchmark performance
