The new generation of digital technologies, led by AI, is driving the reorganization of global factor resources and the transformation of economic structure, reshaping the world's competitive landscape. Against this backdrop, there is a universal consensus to deepen cross-border cooperation in the digital economy.

The third meeting of the China-Spain Business Advisory Council in Beijing on November 13 discussed global cooperation between Chinese and Spanish enterprises and cooperation in energy transition and advanced manufacturing and established a platform for exchange and networking between entrepreneurs from the two countries.

Angel Viña, founder and CEO of Spanish data management company Denodo, said China and Spain have an excellent opportunity to form alliances and partnerships to jointly explore the international market. Enterprises from both countries would benefit from the cooperation.

Since entering the Chinese market in 2019, Denodo has participated in the transformation of numerous Chinese enterprises with its data management solution, connecting China and Spain, and adding innovative momentum to the digital economy cooperation between the two countries.

Why not choose China? 

According to data from China's Ministry of Commerce, in 2024, Spain was China's fifth largest trading partner within the EU, while China was Spain's largest trading partner outside the EU.

Both sides are strengthening their complementary advantages, consolidating traditional trade and investment sectors while exploring cooperation potential in emerging fields such as new energy, artificial intelligence, and the digital economy.

"It's not why choose China, but why not choose China," said Viña. He regards China as a world leader in fields such as new energy and engineering construction, with impressive strength in the technology sector.

Denodo provides data fabric technology that can integrate data across different sources and storage formats, helping enterprises embrace distributed environments and manage them efficiently. Its data management technologies and solutions are facilitating the digital transformation of Chinese enterprises.          

For example, Seres, a well-known Chinese new energy vehicle company, encountered bottlenecks in data processing and integration as its business grew. The data volume was massive and needed to be updated frequently. This led to delays in data retrieval and difficulties in data utilization, making it difficult to respond to the surge in data demands from various departments.

Denodo's data management platform, using data weaving technology, increased data delivery speed by 88percent compared to traditional methods, providing efficient data support for business intelligence tools.

Solving pain points in AI application

The 2024 Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools report by international research firm Gartner predicts that by 2027, AI assistants and AI-augmented workflows integrated into data integration tools will reduce manual intervention by 60percent and enable self-service data management.

AI is profoundly impacting various industries, fundamentally changing enterprise workflows and value creation paths. As the core of enterprise operations shifts toward data-driven insights and decisions, more and more companies are realizing that building excellent data management capabilities is no longer optional, but a strategic pillar that directly determines whether an enterprise can reconstitute its core competitiveness in the wave of intelligence.

However, opportunities always come with challenges. According to a research report released by MIT in August, up to 95percent of AI projects fail to deliver a return on investment for enterprises, half of the projects end in failure, and only fivepercent successfully achieve commercial deployment.

Viña says most early AI project failures stem from the following reasons: The data is inaccurate or incomplete; there is a lack of comprehensive planning and implementation is rushed; or there is a shortage of relevant digital skills and AI talent.

Data issues—which lead to AI having insufficient understanding of the business context, inadequate integration with existing business processes, and an inability to achieve effective learning—are the most critical pain points.

To address these pain points, the Denodo data management platform's semantic layer and logical data management capabilities ensure data security and compliance and enable real-time data delivery at a controllable cost, helping enterprises overcome the challenges of AI strategy implementation.

Personnel in different roles within an organization can discover and access data faster and more intuitively, while also gaining insights into data usage.

The development of AI technology is driving the evolution of data management from a supportive tool to a strategic infrastructure, becoming a core prerequisite for the scaled implementation of cutting-edge applications such as GenAI and intelligent agents.

Companies like Denodo are expected to leverage their advantages in data management and AI integration innovation to speed up the digital and intelligent transformation processes of enterprises, pushing international cooperation in the digital economy.