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ZDNET Highlights
- Most businesses expect AI to bring profound internal changes.
- However, only a few of them know how to get from A to B.
- Businesses are struggling to implement AI.
The increasing use of AI in the workplace is exposing one contradiction after another. Technology use among individual workers is higher than ever, yet most businesses are not reporting organization-wide benefits; The use of AI is increasing in the customer service sector, but customers show they prefer talking to humans; And businesses are rushing to incorporate AI into their daily operations, despite the fact that many of them do not trust the technology.
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A new report from IT infrastructure services provider Kindril reveals even more contradictions.
A multidimensional ‘readiness gap’
Kindril surveyed 3,700 senior business executives in 21 countries for its latest “readiness report,” published on Monday. Echoing recent predictions from some key business leaders, 87% of executives among them said AI will “completely transform roles and responsibilities” within their organizations over the next twelve months, and yet comparatively few (29%) said their workforces are equipped with the skills and training needed to take advantage of the technology.
The Kindrill report also revealed a surprising gap between organizations’ confidence levels in their ability to adapt to new technological trends and their track record in actually doing so.
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According to the report, 90% of respondents were confident that “their organization’s tools and processes allow them to rapidly test and scale new ideas,” yet more than half (57%) said, “their innovation efforts are often delayed due to fundamental issues in the technology stack.”
To put it simply: While there is an urgent demand among senior business executives – not just in tech, but in industries like banking, energy and healthcare – to automate internal processes using AI tools, many of them do not have a clear understanding of how they should do so, given the current structures of their organizations.
“As enterprises grapple with the promise of transformative value from AI, a readiness gap exists,” Martin Schroeter, president and CEO of Kindril, said in a statement. “Bridging that gap is the challenge and opportunity ahead.”
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In another twist, 54% of respondents reported measurable ROI from their AI efforts — welcome news for executives in the wake of numerous studies failing to show solid returns for virtually any business — but even more (62%) said those efforts are still in their pilot phase.
Pacesetters (again)
In language echoing a study by Cisco published last week, Kindril identifies a small group of “pacesetters” (13% of survey respondents) who are “able to combine a strong vision with the adaptability to invest and act on it.”
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It’s the small contingent of business leaders who have managed not to fall into the “readiness gap,” according to Kindrell. They are setting ambitious goals for the adoption of AI by their organizations, while also taking concrete actions to prepare their teams and technical infrastructure to be able to achieve those goals.
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For example, Pacesetters reported on average that about 66% of their employees were currently using AI on a weekly basis, compared to 63% of “followers” and 56% of “laggards” (the other two groups identified in the Kindrill report).
Cisco also identified “pacesetters” representing between 13% and 14% of the more than 8,000 business leaders it surveyed for its study. In an email statement to ZDNET, Kindril said this overlap in findings between the two reports is “purely coincidental.”
