ITWeb, in partnership with Incasu, conducted a survey on AI adoption in South African businesses to gain an understanding of general AI requirements in the local market, as well as whether there’s a demand for chatbot and AI agent services. The survey looked at AI maturity in local businesses and how far along they are on their AI journey.
A total of 144 responses were received, with 76% of respondents being at executive or middle management level, working across a range of industries: 28% of respondents come from the IT sector, 15% from financial services and 14% from the public sector.
The survey opened by gauging the general level of AI knowledge across South African businesses by asking about their familiarity with AI technologies and their potential applications. Half of the survey’s respondents (50%) said they were very familiar with AI technologies, and 47% were starting the process.
Asked about their company’s current stage of AI adoption to identify how far along they are on their AI journey, 43% said they were exploring AI possibilities, 24% had operational AI in limited areas, 19% were running pilot AI projects and 13% had integrated AI into core processes. Matthys Marais, CEO of Incasu, says: “Compared to global research findings, the spread shows that South African businesses are lagging slightly behind their global counterparts. We believe that a lack of local skills and consulting services is the main contributor to the lag, followed by the cost of AI services, and lastly, by a lack of tried-and-tested use cases across most industries.”
"Well-trained chatbots are the ideal way to improve knowledge retention.”
Matthys Marais, CEO, Incasu
When it comes to business priorities driving AI interest, the top three primary goals that respondents associated with AI adoption were: automating repetitive tasks (69%), enhancing decision-making with data (61%) and improving customer service (57%).
Marais comments: “It’s no surprise that businesses will first focus on functions most prone to human error, since these changes carry minimal risk and offer clear returns on investment. Once foundational automation is in place, it makes sense to turn attention to data quality. At this stage, AI can contribute by offering predictive analytics, forecasting and valuable insights. But customer-facing AI requires trust, reliability and brand sensitivity, which will take more time and investment to perfect.”
He says the business functions highlighted by respondents that can benefit the most from AI also involve a good measure of repetitive tasks. Just over half of the respondents said IT and security (65%), followed by customer service (63%), product development (54%) and sales and marketing (52%) could benefit from AI. Operations and logistics (51%) came in next on the list, with finance and accounting (44%) and HR and recruitment (37%) ranked slightly lower. He says: “By having reliable automation in place, business will have the scaffolding to build further, making AI an optimiser rather than a people-replacer.”
Looking at pain points that may delay or prevent AI adoption, the three biggest perceived challenges or barriers are security and compliance concerns (52%), lack of internal expertise (47%) and integration with existing systems (42%). “Incasu is aware of the compliance concerns of its existing customers, hence we build solutions that comply with South African data-protection standards, with customer data staying secure, encrypted and under constant control – and always POPIA-ready. Incasu strives to provide the expertise for them to make AI adoption safe, simple and seamless.”
AI agent and chatbot
The current penetration of AI agent and chatbot solutions is roughly half (49%), with 65% of survey respondents seeing value in deploying chatbots or AI agent-based solutions in customer support, 56% seeing value in data collection and reporting and 55% identifying value for internal employee assistance. Marais comments: “There is a big need for businesses to improve their levels of internal employee assistance. South African businesses are losing skills to lucrative job opportunities abroad, meaning they need to nurture and grow the talent they already have. One of the best ways to achieve this is to embed existing knowledge in an AI tool and use it to train and assist employees in their day-to-day tasks. Well-trained chatbots are the ideal way to improve knowledge retention.”
When asked how important chatbots or AI agents are to their broader AI strategy, respondents were almost evenly split between limited use (49%) and extremely important (47%), and the top three capabilities that survey respondents would require from a chatbot or AI agent solution are: integration with internal systems (CRM, ERP, FIN) (66%), reporting and analytics (66%) and learning and adaptation over time (58%). “It’s a common experience for chatbots to be very robot-like, with a limited range of responses. An important goal with chatbots is to ensure that interactions feel natural, so users come away feeling truly understood. When combined with the ability to deliver information from internal systems, such as an appointment book, users are more likely to receive better answers from the interaction,” he explains.
Finally, a quarter (26%) of respondents said their business has a dedicated budget for AI-related initiatives in the next 12 months, while 46% said they don’t, but are planning to. Marais concludes: “The results indicate the expected sequence of investments in eventually establishing AI into core processes, but this will vary between industries and size of businesses. From our experience, businesses reach certain size and volume thresholds where it becomes both affordable and justifiable to introduce AI components. A comprehensive expansion plan in AI is therefore essential for business growth.”
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