While the hype of artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential role as a driver of transformational change to businesses and industries is pervasive, there are limited insights into what companies are actually doing to reap its benefits. The Artificial Intelligence Report, conducted by Ernst & Young, aims at getting a deeper understanding of how companies currently manage their AI activities, and how they address the current challenges and opportunities ahead.<\/p>\n
To get to the heart of the AI agenda, we received input from AI leaders in 277 companies, across 7 sectors and 15 countries in Europe, via surveys and\/or interviews. Below is a brief summary of what they had to say.<\/p>\n
71%<\/strong> of the companies respond that AI is considered an important topic on the executive management level<\/strong>. This is significantly higher than on the non-managerial \/ employee level where AI is only considered an important topic in 28% of the companies. Interestingly, Board of Directors also came out lower with \u2018only\u2019 38% of respondees reporting that AI is important to their board.<\/p>\n 89%<\/strong> of the respondents expect AI to generate business benefits by optimizing their companies\u2019 operations in the future<\/strong>. This is followed by 74%<\/strong> that expect AI to be key to engaging customers.<\/strong> This can be done\u00a0by enhancing the user experience, tailoring content, increasing response speed, adding sentiment, creating experiences, etc.<\/p>\n C-suite respondents scored \u2018engaging customers\u2019 highest of the AI benefit areas. 100% Of the most advanced companies expect AI will help them engage customers, compared to only 63% of the less mature companies. Using AI to \u2018transform products and services\u2019 comes out slightly lower with 65%. \u2018Empowering employees\u2019 comes out the lowest with 60% of the companies expecting AI-generated benefits in that area.<\/p>\n 57%<\/strong> of the companies expect AI to have a high or a very high impact on business areas that are \u201centirely unknown to the company today\u201d<\/strong>. This is almost as much as AI is expected to impact the core of these companies\u2019 current business. 65% is expecting AI to have a high or a very high impact on the core business. With AI presumably pushing companies into totally new domains in the future, it is perhaps not surprising that AI is receiving attention as a key topic for executive management.<\/p>\n Despite the apparent sizable impact that companies expect from AI, only a very small proportion of companies, constituting 4%<\/strong> of the total sample, self-report that AI is actively contributing<\/strong> to \u2018many processes in the company and enabling quite advanced tasks today\u2019 (referred to as \u2018most advanced\u2019 in this report).<\/p>\n Another 28% are in the \u2018released\u2019 stage where they have put AI selectively to active use in one or a few processes in the company. The majority, 51%<\/strong> of companies, are still only planning for AI or are in early stage pilots<\/strong>. 7% of companies are self-rated as least mature, indicating that they are not yet thinking about AI at this stage.<\/p>\n The most widely reported adoption of AI (47%) was in the IT\/Technology function, followed by R&D with 36%, and customer service with 24%. Interestingly, several functions are hardly using AI at all<\/strong>; most notably, the procurement function, where only 4% of the companies currently use AI. This is followed by HR with 7% and product management with 9%. This is perhaps surprising, given the many use cases and applicable solutions in these functional areas.<\/p>\nMost impact expected from \u2018optimizing operations\u2019, with \u2018engaging customers\u2019 as a close second<\/h2>\n
AI is expected to impact entirely new business areas in the future<\/h2>\n
“Advanced” with AI<\/h2>\n
Noticeable potential for AI in many corporate functions<\/h2>\n