92% of Asia Pacific and Japan midmarket businesses say adopting generative AI is a top business priority
Singapore, 18 September 2024 – Successful Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) midmarket organisations are more likely to prioritise generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) than those who are seeing lower revenue growth – and they are adopting new AI innovations in every corner of their business.
A recent study of 12,003 businesses by SAP found APJ midmarket businesses, defined as companies with between 250 and 1,500 employees, with high revenue growth[1] are more likely to put a moderate or strong priority on the adoption of Gen AI (94%) than those with lower revenue growth (86%).
“Business AI is the biggest technology opportunity of the 21st century for businesses in Asia Pacific and Japan,” said Utkarsh Maheshwari, Chief Partner Officer and Head of MidMarket, SAP Asia Pacific & Japan.
“But the benefits of Business AI are not restricted to large enterprises. Organisations of every size can realise the opportunities that relevant, reliable, and responsible AI can provide. That isn’t just image generation or making videos. It’s automating everyday pain points, providing great insights quickly, and reliably solving simple business problems.”
Adopting AI is a top organisational priority in APJ
The study, which surveyed 3,400 people in five APJ markets, found use of artificial intelligence is a top organisational priority for midmarket businesses.
Adopting standard business applications of AI like machine learning for data analysis and predictive analytics and adopting Gen AI are top organisational priorities across APJ (92% moderate and high priority). Other key priorities include cybersecurity threats and addressing gaps in supply chains (all 92%).
Importantly, improving or expanding supplier and partner networks (43%) is the top priority for achieving growth. Yet, artificial intelligence is seen as a priority to transform organisational processes in every corner of the business.
Over half of APJ midmarket organisations surveyed place a high priority on AI to transform their data security and privacy (52%), and to drive accurate decision-making (50%). Other key areas AI can transform include creating new business models (48%), improving customer experience (48%), enhancing training and skills (48%), and optimising supply chains (47%).
AI is creating value for APJ businesses today
But AI isn’t just being planned to achieve future benefits. It is being implemented today.
AI is already in use to a moderate or strong degree in midmarket APJ businesses to create marketing and sales content, gathering market intelligence, app development and testing, and for customer or vendor interactions (all 83%).
“AI is not new. In fact, we’ve been using it for decades,” continued Maheshwari. “More than 27,000 customers are already using SAP Business AI today, including thousands across Asia Pacific and Japan. We’ve released more than 70 Generative AI use cases in the past year, already infused across our platforms and solutions, and we expect more than 100 use cases to be available by the end of 2024, which means that 80% of the most-commonly used scenarios will be AI enabled. The time to explore the benefits of Business AI is now.”
APJ midmarket businesses see data as key risk to growth – and AI adoption
Yet challenges remain to drive growth in APJ midmarket businesses.
Respondents noted lack of quality data (37%) and lack of integration between systems (33%) as key internal challenges to growth, alongside issues with supply chains (40%) and siloes in their business (33%).
And data is also cited as an organisational risk when it comes to AI. Midmarket businesses in APJ said the biggest risks to their company from AI were acting upon incorrect information (36%), finding and retaining talent (34%), lack of transparency in results (34%) and insufficient data size and quality (31%).
“The better the quality and scale of your data, the better the results of your AI,” concluded Maheshwari. “That’s why working with a technology partner like SAP is critical, because it is already built into the applications that power the most critical business processes. Only then can APJ businesses of every size make the promise of Business AI a reality.”
About this research
SAP Insights collected data from 12,003 respondents across 20 nations and 28 industries. Respondents were from organisations with between 250 and 1,500 employees, with director to C-suite titles. The study was conducted in March-April 2024 via an online survey.
[1] High revenue growth is defined as companies in the top quartile of respondents outlining revenue growth during 2024.
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