Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to be one of the most dominant topics in the business world. The main goals companies achieve with the use of AI are improved operational efficiency, increased productivity, and optimized processes. Surprisingly: The introduction of AI is stagnating in German companies – and the main objective is not to save costs, but to drive innovations. Overall, many companies are still lacking core competencies, requirements, and strategies to introduce AI in daily business and must catch up to not fall behind competitors. This is the conclusion of the “Global AI & Digital Experience Survey” by Riverbed.
The study found a considerable discrepancy between aspiration and reality when it comes to the use of AI in companies. 95% of organizations are convinced that AI provides a better digital experience for users and improves IT operations. However, only 37% of decision-makers consider their company to be prepared optimally to implement the AI strategy they have drawn up.
For companies to make the best possible use of the potential of AI, they need to transition their AI-hyped ideas to pragmatic AI solutions that can be integrated into operational processes and deliver measurable results. Decisive prerequisites are the availability of high-quality data (see section “Data plays the decisive role”), the associated metadata and contextual information, appropriate IT infrastructure, and the use of cloud services (where possible). Ideally, AI is integrated into existing user interfaces and supports users in carrying out their daily activities seamlessly without additional steps necessary.
Many companies state that they have left the phase of experimenting and evaluating AI. 65% are currently striving to drive their AI strategy in a targeted manner by investing in infrastructure and experts – aiming at implementing AI on a broad basis. 23% have already succeeded in fully integrating AI functionalities and applications into their business processes and supporting strategic decision-making within the company.
The study “AI deployment in companies in Germany” by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action depicts the current situation in Germany. According to the study, 12% of companies have used AI within their processes in 2023 already. Consequently, the adoption of AI has stagnated since 2021. The low momentum in the use of AI is surprising given the enormous attention the topic of AI is receiving in the public debate and the positive effects attributed to the use of artificial intelligence in companies.
Another finding of the study is that German companies primarily associate AI with the hope of generating innovations. Reducing costs by using AI is not a primary focus of most companies.
The availability of high-quality data is a decisive factor for using artificial intelligence successfully in companies. In the “Global AI & Digital Experience Survey”, 85% of respondents agreed with this statement. In practice, insufficient data collection and missing standardization often hinder establishing AI. 43% rate the integrity of their data as “excellent”. 40% rate their data as accurate.
In addition, 69% rate the effectiveness of data usage in their company as critical. In 42% of the companies, bad data quality even hampers further AI investments. Furthermore, data security is rated as important in the context of AI. 75% of respondents fear that their data could become publicly accessible as a result. However, such concerns are unjustified, as hosting options in the private cloud, open-source AI models, and AI pipeline toolkits for local installations are available, such as the OpenAI service on Microsoft Azure or LangChain.
A key finding of the “Global AI & Digital Experience Survey” is that many companies are currently looking for opportunities to add value to their business processes by integrating artificial intelligence. As the initial hype surrounding AI has moved into the “slope of enlightenment”, companies now focus on the pragmatic use of AI to make AI functionalities and applications available for daily business. If this succeeds, artificial intelligence will create considerable competitive advantages and significantly improve the performance of companies.
For the “Global AI & Digital Experience Survey”, 1,200 decision-makers from the IT, business, and public sectors in seven countries (Australia, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, UK, USA) were surveyed. The survey aimed at understanding how artificial intelligence contributes to the success of companies and IT executives and what challenges are associated with the use of AI.