Avanade AI Readiness Report
New research from Avanade explores the readiness of organisations – leaders and their people – to introduce, adopt and scale generative AI tools such as Microsoft Copilot. We surveyed 3,000+ people in 10 countries across a range of industries and job levels to gain practical insights to enable leaders to take actions that realise value from generative AI faster.
What does the research explore?
Organisational AI readiness
Are organisations and their leaders prioritising actions to equally ready their people, processes and platforms for AI?
Impacts of Microsoft Copilot
Generative AI tools like Microsoft Copilot are here to supercharge human intelligence, but are employees supported and trained to work with AI as their co-pilot?
Unlocking value with AI
AI offers great potential, but are organisations safely scaling data, cloud and security to do more and grow more with AI?
92
%
Increased digital investments are needed
36
%
Many leaders lack familiarity with generative AI
64
%
Most expect headcount to increase up to 9%
63
%
Support is required to onboard employees
Ready or not?
97% of respondents use AI in their current role at least weekly – most often for automating regular repetitive tasks. But that’s about to change. Looking ahead, professionals are imagining how their roles will be enhanced by AI. By the end of 2024, most expect it to impact their day-to-day jobs most by inspiring creative ideas and innovation. But are they prepared to take advantage of this benefit?
Key findings of our global research
Technology is being prioritised over people
While 96% of employees are confident their organisations and IT teams have the knowledge and resources to scale AI, far fewer feel the same way about how their people-centred processes will empower and protect employees. About half (49%) are not fully confident that their organisation’s risk management processes are adequate for an enterprise-wide technical integration of generative AI. Even fewer (48%) say their organisation has put in place a complete set of specific guidelines/policies for responsible AI.
Most are not yet equipped to work with AI co-pilots
Most employees look forward to using AI co-pilots, and 79% anticipate that generative AI tools like Microsoft Copilot will impact up to 20 hours of their work week. But their responses indicate they are short on skills and support to use them effectively and responsibly. 98% agree that support will be required to onboard/train employees to use generative AI tools like Microsoft Copilot, and 50% agree this training effort will demand significant support.
Data platform investments are essential for Al
Nearly all (94%) organisations are increasing their digital investments due to generative AI, but inconsistencies emerge when it comes to how those digital investments are being prioritised to help test, learn and iterate to scale AI responsibly. Most important? IT employees rank their data and analytics platform (such as Databricks or Microsoft Fabric) among top priorities to scale AI in 2024. Accurate, unified data is key for AI, but today less than half (48%) of employees completely trust AI’s results.
Expert Spotlight
Florin Rotar
Chief AI Officer
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