A new global study by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has revealed that more than eight out of 10 (86%) of senior business leaders have already deployed artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance existing revenue streams or create new ones.
The “TCS AI for Business Global Study” – a comprehensive report on the state of AI adoption and its impact on businesses – also finds that 69% of businesses are more focused on using AI to spur innovation and increase revenue than on productivity improvement and cost optimisation.
Executives are generally positive about the impact of AI, with 57% reporting excitement or optimism about the potential impact of AI on businesses. Among respondents in the study, 45% expect up to half their employees will need to use generative AI capabilities to do their job in three years’ time – and another 41% think even more will do so. Most (65%) believe AI will augment and enhance human capabilities enabling people to focus on higher-value activities that require creativity and strategic thinking.
Dr Harrick Vin, Chief Technology Officer, TCS, said, “Last year was a year of exuberance with every enterprise experimenting with AI/GenAI use cases,” says Dr Harrick Vin, CTO of TCS. “We are now entering an era of wide-and-deep enterprise AI adoption. Enterprises, however, are realising that the path to production for AI solutions is not easy and that building an AI-mature enterprise is a marathon, not a sprint. Our AI study has confirmed this sentiment; it has also highlighted that enterprises feel underprepared to deploy AI solutions at scale, as well as to manage the profound shifts in the roles of people and ways of working resulting from such deployments.”
Business leaders are less certain about the path to transformation. Only 4% use AI in a way that has transformed their business – and nearly a quarter (24%) haven’t even moved beyond the initial exploratory phase. Top barriers to business success include current corporate IT infrastructures and customer expectations. Organisations also recognise the need to move beyond existing metrics to measure the success of AI implementations; nearly three-fourths (72%) say they don’t have the right metrics. The survey also highlights the need for businesses to take a strategic approach to AI adoption and develop the right performance indicators to measure the impact of the technology on their business.
“When calibrated for accuracy and harnessed responsibly, GenAI makes the computational power of the data, cloud, and AI come alive,” says Sivaraman Ganesan, head, AI.Cloud Business Unit at TCS. “Add in human ingenuity and organisations can create a new paradigm for the modern marketplace. As a result, today’s enterprises will deliver new stakeholder and customer value like never before – incrementally through assist and augment efforts, and exponentially as transformation initiatives.”
The TCS Thought Leadership Institute surveyed nearly 1 300 CEOs and other senior executives with P&L responsibilities, across 12 industries and 24 countries. About half the companies had $1-billion to $5-billion in annual revenue and the other half had over $5-billion in revenue.
Other key results from the report include:
• Executives believe the impact of AI will be greater than or equal to that of the Internet (54%) and smartphones (59%).
• Corporate functions with the most completed AI projects: Finance/comptroller (completion rate of 29%); HR (completion rate of 28%); Marketing (completion rate of 28%).
• 65% of senior executives say their competitive advantage will still come from humans – with their creativity, intuition, and strategic thinking unleashed by AI’s augment and assist capabilities.
• 40% of executives say that in the future they have a lot of changes to make to their business before they can take full advantage of AI.
• Over half (55%) said they were actively making changes right now to their business or operating models, or to their products and services due to the potential benefits and risks of AI.
• 81% of executives highlight the need for global AI standards and regulations.
• 93% of executives surveyed in the UK said they have AI projects aimed at growing revenue. Executives in other regions are equally enthusiastic with 89% in North America, 88% in APAC, 83% in Continental Europe, and 80% in Latin America.
• Nearly two-thirds of BFSI (64%) and manufacturing (63%) industry executives surveyed say they are excited or optimistic about the impact of AI on businesses.