ITWeb, in partnership with Incasu, conducted a survey on AI adoption in SA business to gain an understanding of general AI requirements in the local market as well as whether there’s demand for chatbot and AI agent services.
The survey ran online during August and September and looked at AI maturity in SA businesses as well as how far along they are on their AI journey.
A total of 144 responses were captured, with 76% of respondents being at executive or middle management level, working across a range of industries, with 28% of respondents coming from the IT sector, 15% in financial services and 14% from public sector.
Here are some of the key findings:
1. Half of survey respondents (50%) said their business was familiar with AI technologies and their potential applications, while 47% were starting the process.
2. Asked which of the following best described their company’s current stage of AI adoption, 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.
3. The top three primary goals that respondents associate with AI adoption are: automating repetitive tasks (69%), enhancing decision making with data (61%) and improving customer service (57%).
4. The business functions that can benefit most from AI were listed as IT and security (65%) and customer service (63%), followed by product development (54%) and sales and marketing (52%). Operations and logistics (51%) came in next on the list, with finance and accounting (44%) and HR and recruitment (37%) ranked slightly lower.
5. The three biggest perceived challenges or barriers to adopting AI are security and compliance concerns (52%), lack of internal expertise (47%) and integration with existing systems (42%)
6. Half (49%) of survey respondents use AI chatbots or AI agents.
7. Areas in which respondents see value in deploying chatbots or AI agent-based solutions include:
8. 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%).
9. 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%).
10. A quarter (26%) of respondents say their business has a dedicated budget for AI-related initiatives in the next 12 months, while 46% say they don’t, but are planning to.
11. The types of AI investments that respondent organisations are most likely to make include:
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