Well before the occurrence of COVID-19 pandemic, companies in Asian region were slowly but surely assessing how and where to embed artificial intelligence (AI) into the business core. With wide mobile penetration among large populations, governments that are AI-friendly, many pinned high hopes on Asia pushing the AI envelop.
Against this backdrop, we surveyed 590 senior executives from eight industries across Asia-Pac (APAC) and the Middle East to assess various facets of their AI plans. While companies in the region see the transformational power of AI — and are gingerly stepping up — their pace of adoption appears measured as evidenced by our finding that only a minority of projects have reached full deployment. Progress appears stymied by several challenges.
Pandemic-fueled disruption also brings new business demands to accelerate the pace of AI, such as the need for real-time decision making, predictive analytics, improved personalization to drive delightful customer experiences, turning more and more of core work into virtual mode, etc. To help companies accelerate their adoption of AI, we present a seven-step framework.
