The Unstructured Data Bottleneck: Why GenAI is Finally Breaking It, and how Latttice Makes it Accessible to All
Unlock the 80% of Data You've Been Ignoring.
Unstructured data is exploding, but remains largely untapped. While it accounts for more than 80% of enterprise data, most organizations still struggle to access, analyze, or secure it. Historically, only deep-pocketed enterprises could afford to address the problem. Now, thanks to GenAI and platforms like Latttice, any business can extract, secure, and understand its unstructured assets, PDFs, videos, audio, websites, SEO dashboards, and create governed data products alongside structured data. No code, no delays, no multi-million dollar projects. Just actionable insight.
Let's Talk About the Problem Everyone Has, and No One Has Solved
Every organization I've worked with, whether a global bank, healthcare provider, or tech startup, has the same underlying issue: critical knowledge is trapped in unstructured formats.
Design documentation, architecture plans, PDF reports, regulatory policies, sales call recordings, SEO dashboards, they're filed away, scattered across silos, or stored in legacy systems. And once created, that information is rarely used again.
In large organizations, I've seen hundreds of architects generating documents every day. Yet no one can efficiently find, reuse, or analyze these materials. Projects are rebuilt from scratch. Institutional knowledge is lost. Teams waste time on work that's already been done.
This isn't just inefficient, it's costing companies dearly.
Everyone's Drowning in Data, But It's the Wrong Kind
What organizations are really facing is not a shortage of data, but a shortage of accessible, trusted context at the moment decisions need to be made. The challenge is no longer collecting information. It is turning fragmented, unstructured knowledge into governed, usable business insight before opportunities, risks, or customer moments are lost.
According to Gartner, over 80% of enterprise data is unstructured, and that share is growing three times faster than structured data. IDC projects that by 2025, the world will produce 175 zettabytes of data, with 80% of that being unstructured.
Yet, Forrester reports that only 16% of companies treat unstructured data analytics as a priority, even though it makes up the majority of their data.
McKinsey Global Institute estimates that up to $3 trillion is lost annually in productivity and opportunity due to untapped data. Employees spend 60–80% of their time searching, cleaning, or organizing information, rather than using it.
Let that sink in:
Most enterprise knowledge is unstructured. Most of it is unused. And it's costing everyone, time, money, and momentum.
Why GenAI Changes the Game
Until now, tackling unstructured data at scale required expensive, highly specialized solutions. Large enterprises invested in proprietary platforms, built custom scrapers, or hired teams of engineers and data scientists to manually process their content.
Smaller organizations? They simply didn't have a path forward.
But now, Generative AI offers a new way. As McKinsey puts it,
"The big change when it comes to data is that the scope of value has gotten much bigger because of generative AI's ability to work with unstructured data."
LLMs and other GenAI technologies can now interpret documents, summarize videos, transcribe audio, and answer questions about free-form content, all in plain language. One CTO said:
"GenAI will unlock unstructured data's potential, turning documents, images, and videos into valuable resources."
We finally have the power to make sense of the 80% we've been ignoring.
But Power Isn't Enough, We Need Accessibility
Here's the reality:
AI models alone don't solve the problem. You still need a secure, governed platform that can turn unstructured content into usable business assets, without writing code, and without rebuilding your entire data architecture.
And that's exactly what we've built with Latttice.
Introducing Unstructured Data Product Creation in Latttice
With our latest release, Latttice gives users the ability to extract, secure, and understand unstructured content, from PDFs, videos, and audio files to websites and SEO dashboards, and turn it into governed, queryable data products.
Here's how it works:
- 01Connect or Upload. Connect or upload a content source (e.g., compliance PDF, call recording, product demo video).
- 02Automatic Processing. Latttice processes the content securely and automatically.
- 03Natural Language Queries. You can ask questions using natural language — no code required.
- 04Combine Insights. Combine insights with your structured data (from Snowflake, CRMs, etc.).
- 05Build Data Products. Build complete, fused data products for your teams to use instantly.
All of this happens within your governed environment, traceable, reusable, and accessible to business users.
Democratizing What Was Once Enterprise-Only
Let's be clear: Big players have been tackling this for years, but only because they could afford to.
As The New Stack notes,
"Historically, only large enterprises could create reusable data assets. This capability is now being democratized."
What was once a $10M custom project is now a capability available out of the box with Latttice.
Why This Matters for Your Business
Structured data shows you what happened. Unstructured data tells you why.
Customer Insights
Sales figures tell you where you lost customers. Call recordings and support logs tell you what frustrated them.
User Experience
Usage metrics show drop-offs. Help videos and chat transcripts explain the blockers.
Strategic Context
Reports show patterns. Design files, documentation, and emails explain the rationale.
By bringing these sources together, you get the full picture. And you can do it with Latttice, on your terms, on your timeline.
Final Thoughts
For too long, unstructured data has been the elephant in the room: massive, valuable, and ignored.
Now, thanks to GenAI and Latttice, you can finally act on it.
"With Latttice, we've made it possible for anyone to use AI to understand content, no matter where it lives or how it's formatted. This isn't just scraping, it's empowerment."
If you've ever said "we already have that somewhere," but couldn't find or use it, now you can.
Get in touch to explore how unstructured data product creation can work for your team.
Join a Data Conversation,
Cameron Price.
Cameron has spent over two decades helping enterprises turn fragmented information into governed, decision-ready data, and now leads Data Tiles, with Latttice, on a mission to give every team the ability to reason over unstructured content alongside structured data, without code or seven-figure budgets.
External Reference List
- Gartner, Unstructured Data is Growing 3x Faster Than Structured Data. www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-08-28
- IDC, Data Age 2025: The Evolution of Data to Life-Critical. www.seagate.com/files/www-content/our-story/trends/files/idc-seagate-dataage-whitepaper.pdf
- Forrester, Data and Analytics Survey Results, 2023. go.forrester.com/blogs/
- McKinsey Global Institute, The Age of Analytics: Competing in a Data-Driven World. www.mckinsey.com/mgi/overview/2021-the-age-of-analytics
- CMSWire, Workers Spend 60–80% of Their Time Finding and Organizing Information. www.cmswire.com/information-management/why-we-need-to-rethink-enterprise-search/
- McKinsey & Company, The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier. www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights
- PwC CTO Digital Trust Insights, GenAI will unlock unstructured data's potential. www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/trust/genai-and-trust.html
- The New Stack, Reusability in Data Products Is the Future of Modern Data Platforms. thenewstack.io