North American companies are leading the way in data & AI adoption
Key figures - North America versus Europe
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Operational data maturity: 61% of U.S. organizations and 67% of Canadian organizations say their data approach is already operational, compared with 46% in France.
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Data exploitation: more than half of collected data is exploited by 52% of U.S. companies and 55% of Canadian companies, versus only 41% in France and 39% in the Netherlands.
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Unified platforms: 59% of U.S. organizations already work from a single data platform, compared with 38% in France and 29% in the Netherlands.
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Data sharing: 71% of U.S. organizations pool data collection across departments, compared with 50% in France and 44% in the Netherlands.
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AI usage: AI is already used for data exploitation by 54% of U.S. organizations, vers 36% in France and only 19% in the Netherlands.
Across North America, companies have moved beyond seeing data as a compliance topic. Instead, data is treated as a direct performance leverm embedded in operations, decision-making, and investment strategies.
Data security is strong, but value extraction remains a global challenge
Across all six countries (U.S., France, UK, Belgium, Canada and the Netherlands), 91% of organizations have clear governance rules for security, ownership, and access. Yet, only 45% exploit more than half the data they collect. This "glass ceiling" is most visible in Europe, where data strategies have historically prioritized governance and risk management.
What sets North America ahead
Across all regions, the ability to scale data value relies on a small number of structural enablers. The study shows that different levers are currently more widely deployed in Norh America, such as:
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Platform Unification: a single platform dramatically accelerates scaling AI-readiness.
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Organizational integration: North American teams break silos more effectively, enabling data to circulate internally and support cross-functional use cases.
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ROI Culture: U.S. organizations measure the performance impact of data initiatives almost twice as often as European organizations.
“ This study shows that the issue is no longer only about governing data, but about unlocking tomorrow’s performance from it: cleaning and structuring it so it can be used, analysing it in real time, pooling it across departments, and steering it through relevant, shared indicators to support decision-making. Scaling is what now makes the difference between the English-speaking bloc and continental Europe. For Equans, the challenge is to help our clients unlock the value of their treasures, sometimes hidden, by turning them into concrete use cases. Working on IT/OT integration and then AI, across factories, industrial processes and infrastructure, to boost the competitiveness of both private and public organisations. ”
