80 percent of enterprises are investing in AI but a third think they need to spend more

Although 80 percent of enterprises are investing in AI today, one in three business leaders believes their company will need to invest more over the next three years to keep pace with competitors.

This is one of the findings of a survey of 260 large, global organizations, conducted by research firm Vanson Bourne for data and analytics specialist Teradata.

The industries where respondents expect to see the most impact from AI are IT, technology and telecoms (59 percent), business and professional services (43 percent), with customer services and financial services tied for third on 32 percent.

The areas where AI is expected to drive revenue are product innovation and research and development (50 percent), customer service (46 percent), and supply chain and operations (42 percent). This mirrors some of the top areas for AI investment, which include customer experience (62 percent), product innovation (59 percent) and operational excellence (55 percent).

Barriers to AI implementation are foreseen by 91 percent. Lack of IT infrastructure (40 percent) and lack of access to talent (34 percent) are the leading challenges, followed by lack of budget for implementation (30 percent), complications around policies, regulations and rights (28 percent), and impact on customer expectations (23 percent). By contrast only 19 percent see a weak business case for AI technologies as a concern and only 20 percent are worried about the impact of AI and automation on employee morale.

"There is an important trend emerging evident in this report -- enterprises today see AI as a strategic priority that will help them outpace the competition in their respective industries," says Atif Kureishy, vice president, emerging practices at Think Big Analytics, a Teradata company. "But to leverage the full potential of this technology and gain maximum ROI, these businesses will need to revamp their core strategies so AI has an embedded role from the data center to the boardroom."

The full report is available to download from the Teradata website and there's an infographic summary of the findings below.

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