December 08, 2025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AIIM's 2025 Industry Watch Reveals AI Has Reached "Industrial Age" as Organizations Move from Experimentation to Enterprise Execution
Silver Spring, MD – The Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM) today announced the release of its “2025 Industry Watch: State of Intelligent Information Management Technology” report, revealing that artificial intelligence has transitioned from experimental pilots to enterprise-scale execution and fundamentally transformed why organizations invest in information management.
The report, based on 288 responses from practitioners across 21 industries globally, captures a pivotal shift: organizations have moved decisively from uncertainty to confidence, from compliance-driven to value-driven investment, and from manual processes to AI-enabled automation.
"The chaos and uncertainty that characterized 2023 and 2024 has given way to confidence and systematic implementation," said Tori Miller Liu, CIP, President & CEO of AIIM. "We're witnessing AI's industrial age and the evolution from experimental tinkering to structured, enterprise-scale applications."
The Compliance Collapse: A 46-Point Shift
In perhaps the most dramatic finding, compliance and risk management, which drove 70% of information management investments in 2024, collapsed to just 24% in 2025, a stunning 46-percentage-point drop. Customer service (32%), collaboration (30%), and productivity (30%) now lead investment priorities, signaling that organizations justify information management through competitive advantage rather than regulatory necessity.
Meanwhile, AI as an investment priority surged 90% year-over-year, climbing from 10% to 19% and representing the fastest-growing driver in the study.
AI Adoption Reaches Critical Mass
Both generative AI and agentic AI have achieved 91% total adoption when combining current use with planned implementation within 12 months. Organizational preparedness for AI nearly doubled from 34% to 67%, with those reporting being "very prepared" surging from just 7% to 29%, representing realistic confidence rather than inflated optimism.
Current AI adoption increased an average of 9.4% across all information management use cases, with the technology moving from emerging curiosity to standard practice in just 12 months.
Information Leaders Become Strategic Wayfinders
The role and influence of information leaders has evolved substantially. Decision-making authority more than doubled, with 29% now serving as primary or sole decision-makers for information management system purchases, up from just 14% in 2024. Additionally, 22% of information leaders now report through IT/Engineering rather than traditional records management structures, reflecting the strategic consolidation of data and information governance.
"Information leaders have evolved from records custodians to data strategists and AI wayfinders," Liu noted. "They now translate data requirements into executive strategy and serve as essential architects of enterprise AI success."
The AI Readiness Divide
For the first time, AIIM identified a sufficient cohort of "very prepared" organizations (29% of respondents) to establish benchmarks. These AI leaders demonstrate 12-23 percentage points higher proficiency across foundational capabilities and deploy AI to information management tasks at nearly double the rate of their peers.
The gap reveals both opportunity and risk: organizations with strong information management foundations are accelerating ahead, while those still establishing baseline capabilities face an increasingly competitive disadvantage.
Data quality improvements underscore this divide. Organizations rating their data as excellent or good more than doubled from 23% to 52%, while data silos decreased from 76% to 22%. AI governance has moved mainstream, with 44% of organizations now having defined policies and another 49% developing them.
Five Strategic Imperatives with Narrowing Window to Act
Based on the research, AIIM identified five strategic imperatives for organizations seeking to advance their AI capabilities, from reframing value propositions to embracing data curation as core practice. The full imperatives, including detailed implementation guidance and benchmarking data, are available in the complete report.
"As 48% of respondents affirmed, information management will become more important over the next twelve months," Liu emphasized. "The question is not whether to invest in information management maturity, but whether to invest with sufficient urgency and comprehensiveness to remain competitive. The window for catching up is narrowing as AI adoption accelerates and early leaders compound their advantages."
Access the Full Report
The complete 2025 AIIM Industry Watch report, including comprehensive benchmarking data, strategic implementation guidance, and detailed analysis of the "very prepared" organizations, is available for download at https://info.aiim.org/state-of-the-intelligent-information-management-industry-2025.
Research Methodology
The survey was conducted from July 14 to September 10, 2025, with 288 completed responses from information management practitioners across 21 industries and 67 countries (64% North America). The research has a 95% confidence level with ±5.8% margin of error.
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About the Association for Intelligent Information Management
Founded in 1944, the Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM) is a nonprofit organization serving information leaders in over 67 countries worldwide. AIIM's vision is to create a world where every organization benefits from intelligent information and data management to achieve better business outcomes. AIIM helps information leaders manage and prepare unstructured data for AI and automation by providing advice, certification, training, and peer-to-peer support. Through practical and approachable resources, AIIM enables organizations to leverage their information assets effectively, ultimately leading to improved business performance and success. Learn more about AIIM at https://www.aiim.org/.
Contact
Shelly Strickland
AIIM International
hello@aiim.org