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Enterprises up the ante in AI investments

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 24 Oct 2017
Enterprises see AI as a strategic priority that will help them outpace the competition.
Enterprises see AI as a strategic priority that will help them outpace the competition.

A whopping 80% of enterprises are investing today in artificial intelligence (AI), but one in three business leaders believe their company will need to invest more over the next 36 months to keep pace with competitors.

These results come from a survey of 260 large organisations that operate globally, conducted by technology industry market research firm Vanson Bourne on behalf of data analytics solutions provider, Teradata.

According to the study, enterprises are, however, anticipating significant barriers to AI adoption and are looking to strategise against those issues by creating a new C-suite position, the chief AI officer (CAIO), to streamline and coordinate AI adoption.

"There is an important trend emerging evident in this report - enterprises today see AI as a strategic priority that will help them outpace the competition in their respective industries," says Atif Kureishy, vice-president of emerging practices at ThinkBig, a Teradata company.

"But to leverage the full potential of this technology and gain maximum ROI [return on investment], these businesses will need to revamp their core strategies so AI has an embedded role from the data centre to the boardroom."

The survey results found companies are bullish and expect their AI investments to be worth the upfront cost.

The industries where respondents expect to see the most impact from AI are IT, technology and telecoms (59%), business and professional services (43%), and customer services and financial services were tied for third (32%).

The top three challenges where businesses expect AI to drive revenue are product innovation/research and development (50%), customer service (46%), and supply chain and operations (42%). This mirrored some of the top areas of AI investment, which include customer experience (62%), product innovation (59%) and operational excellence (55%).

While adoption rates are high and companies expect AI to prove its worth, there is a lot of opportunity for future implementation, as 80% of respondents report that some form of AI is already in production in their organisation, although 42% say there is lots of room for further implementation across the business.

Some 30% still believe their organisation isn't investing enough and will need to spend more on AI technologies over the next 36 months to keep up with competitors in their industry.

On average, the companies surveyed are currently investing $6.47 million in AI technology - that number rises to $8.25 million average spend for companies in APAC.

Almost all respondents are anticipating barriers to adoption and ROI - as is the case with nearly every emerging technology, says Teradata. It adds that businesses are ready to continue to invest in AI, likely because of the gains executives and IT decision-makers anticipate in cost and time savings, but lack of IT infrastructure and lack of access to talent are cited as the leading barriers.

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