According to a recent poll by Gartner, almost 80% of business strategists across the world consider artificial intelligence (AI), analytics, and automation to be key success drivers over the next two years.
The survey was conducted between October 2022 and April 2023, and its results show that businesses are becoming more interested in cutting-edge technology. Advanced systems are being considered by businesses not only for mundane or routine work, but also for high-stakes initiatives that contribute to the expansion of the company, such as strategic planning and decision-making.
To conduct the poll, Gartner spoke with approximately 200 C-suite executives across a wide range of sectors in North America, Western Europe, Asia/Pacific, Australia/New Zealand.
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The numerous potentials
Respondents were optimistic about the future despite the fact that just 15% of strategic planning and execution tasks are automated at now. Most respondents believed that by 2025, half of these jobs might be automated in some capacity.
Leaders in this study believe that growth is inevitable, but that they will need quicker and better methods to crunch and analyse data in order to keep up with the influx of new information and the need to make more choices with less resources.
David Akers, director of research at Gartner, cited \”leveraging analytics and AI for more efficient, insightful strategy decisions\” as one of the year\’s key challenges and possibilities for corporate strategists.
\”For years, strategists have told their businesses: If you want to stay competitive and effective, you need to go digital,\” he said. \”It looks like they\’re finally ready to incorporate that advice into their own processes.\”
Exploring cutting-edge technology
Findings from the poll indicate that proven technologies are being adopted rapidly by businesses, while newer technologies are still mostly in the testing phase.
The majority of respondents (72%) have integrated descriptive analytics into their processes, while 62% have done the same for diagnostic analytics. For sophisticated prescriptive and predictive analytics, however, only around 26% and 41% of respondents respectively expressed this response. Instead, majority reported either piloting or collecting information on these technologies (47% and 45%, respectively).
Similarly, just 20% and 23% of respondents, respectively, stated they had systems in the deployment stage for current-trend machine learning and natural language processing capabilities. And the vast majority of them are still in the experimental and pilot stages.
The ability to deploy powerful AI and analytics is critical.
In order to make the leap from testing to implementation, business executives should concentrate on resolving the three most pressing issues highlighted by the Gartner survey: identifying business use cases, familiarising companies and functions with technology, and securing the necessary funding.
Since most of the cutting-edge technology is already being utilised effectively elsewhere, the first is of particular significance. According to Gartner, the issue may be fixed by first matching current capabilities to desired outcomes, and then ranking the many potential applications of emerging technologies based on these criteria.
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