Business leaders across Asia-Pacific are gearing up for an AI spending blitz, with investments expected to surge by a good 45 per cent in 2024, compared to last year.
They consider AI as a game changer, able to recharge competitiveness, according to a new report by IDC and commissioned by tech giant Lenovo. It had surveyed 900 chief information officers (CIOs) and revealed a tectonic shift in priorities.
For the first time, customer-centricity has dethroned revenue growth as the top concern for the region’s tech leaders – a marked departure from just a year ago.
At the forefront of this wave is GenAI, with business leaders eager to harness its power to revolutionise customer experiences and drive better outcomes.
In manufacturing, for instance, GenAI promises to turbocharge business intelligence with real-time reports and productivity boosts that could satisfy customers.
“Real-time analytics and insights are vital on manufacturing shopfloors to gather information like defect predictability,” said Sumir Bhatia, president of Lenovo’s Infrastructure Solutions Group in Asia-Pacific, at a media conference to release the report on March 12.
“Conversational AI tools like virtual assistants can help in inventory management, transforming mundane jobs into more interesting functions while lifting productivity,” he added.
Underpinning this AI frenzy is the rise of edge computing, which is seeing the highest spending among key sectors like banking and financial services, manufacturing, and healthcare.
“AI needs to be close to the data, hence IoT device management is critical,” Bhatia explained. The Lenovo report stated that 13 per cent of AI workloads are being deployed at traditional data centres, closer to where data is generated.
However, this AI gold rush is not without its challenges. A key hurdle is the availability of centralised data – the bedrock for AI and GenAI projects.
“Having a single source of truth regarding business and customer data is enabling us to generate useful insights from AI projects,” stated Rick Chandra, the CIO of Secure Parking in Australia, whose company invested in a data lake.
The shortage of AI skills is another formidable obstacle, with a staggering 52 per cent of Southeast Asian enterprises struggling to hire for AI-related positions in areas like data reliance and security. However, this talent gap is driving efforts to upskill existing employees.
In the Lenovo report, Lawrence Liew, director of AI innovation at AI Singapore stated: “Businesses should hire candidates with diverse backgrounds and domain expertise, not just computer science graduates, recognizing the horizontal impact of GenAI.”
As the AI race intensifies, enterprises must navigate challenges like monitoring AI responsibility, preventing misuse, and managing data security risks.
In his discussions with Singapore CIOs, Kumar Mitra, Lenovo regional general manager for the Asia-Pacific Infrastructure Group observed that they face three adoption challenges: their dependence on third parties for solutions and tools because AI is an emerging technology where organisations have not had the time or opportunity to build their own; monitoring AI misuse and hallucinations and security of the applications.
Other pain points faced by Singapore CIOs are a tech workforce that do not have the necessary training in AI automation tools and job security where workers feel threatened by AI taking over their roles, he added.
In the report, IDC stressed that business leaders and CIOs must understand the difference between AI and GenAI before undertaking any project.
Identifying projects to boost productivity in areas like marketing and business intelligence would be a good way to adopt AI in the immediate term, the research firm recommended.
To kickstart new projects, IDC suggested businesses buy pre-built AI models or applications. This approach minimises customisation and would lead to better productivity outcomes.
