Nine-in-ten UK businesses regularly use AI in work, leading adoption

Businesses are finally making progress with their artificial intelligence implementation efforts – as more than three-quarters now say the technology is regularly used across their business. As they advance in their efforts, a majority of UK leaders also say the technology is highly embedded into workflows.

Over the last year, studies around AI implementation have regularly focussed on a widening gap between the expectations of business leaders, and the actual benefits of the AI they are investing in. Now, however, a new study from Publicis Sapient finds that the maturity of executives on the topic is improving – and attention is now focusing to getting the most from the things early pilots have determined AI tools can actually help with.

To that end, many leaders explained to the consultancy that they consider there to be real momentum with the implementation of AI now. An 83% majority said they now use AI regularly “in most processes”, or consider it key to how work gets done. Meanwhile, 53% believe AI is fully embedded into their core workflows.

With this level of oversight, businesses seem more confident in identifying where the shortcomings are for their implementation – and what can realistically be done about them. While 18% of respondents told Publicis Sapient that they thought their AI environment was now “fully integrated”, and 15% said they thought their organisation was “fully equipped to meet expectations”, a larger portion were now able to point to specific issues holding them back.

A 38% portion said integration across legacy systems was their top barrier for scaling AI. How to move beyond that becomes a key question, as companies look to ramp up their success rates using the technology. And answers might come from emulating the markets furthest along the road to maturity.

UK leadership

The responses came from 1,550 enterprise AI decision-makers – from more than 500 global organisations with revenues over $100 million – based in six different markets. According to the researchers, this also offered insight as to where the leading adopters of AI were to be found.

To that end, AI adoption and organisational readiness were significantly higher in the UK, than in the US, France, Germany, the UAE or Australia. A 90% chunk of UK-based respondents said their firm already used AI in most processes – seven points ahead of their US counterparts. Meanwhile, only the UK, on 55%; and the US and UAE on 52% saw a majority of respondents say AI was now “fully capable of fulfilling today’s business needs.”

While that does not mean that UK businesses can rest on their laurels (only 19% said their AI environment was “fully integrated”, compared to 24% of Australian respondents), it is a key indicator of where the areas of most concern for AI implementation are. And its leading factors are integration across all units – at 41% of responses – but also governance, with 36% of leaders identifying this as an area where cross-organisational silos can be dealt with. Indicating this, UK leaders are much less concerned by silos, or whether their business is set up to ‘capture AI value’ than their global equivalents.

“Organisations are under pressure to move faster on AI, and while businesses are increasingly embedding AI into workflows, that momentum stalls if large portions of IT budgets remain focused on maintaining legacy systems,” said Harshu Deshpande, a vice president with Publicis Sapient. “Modernising these environments to strengthen digital foundations is critical to supporting the next phase of AI adoption. Without that groundwork in place, scaling AI across the organisation becomes far more difficult.”