Artificial Intelligence Report: Scaling

Accenture has released a new report, “Artificial Intelligence — At Scale,” which surveyed 1,500 C-level executives across 16 industries worldwide to understand how companies are implementing AI within their organizations.

Three-quarters of C-level executives believe they could be out of business by 2025 if they don’t try to aggressively deploy artificial intelligence (AI) across their organization, a new survey shows.

84% of C-level executives believe they will not be able to achieve their business strategy without scaling AI, but only 16% have moved beyond pure experimentation to creating an organization with strong AI capabilities. As a result, this group of top performers are seeing nearly 3 times the return on their AI investments as lower-performing companies.

The secret to the success of these top performers lies in three key elements: a strong data foundation; multiple dedicated AI teams; and a commitment to strategic, organization-wide AI deployment led by senior executives.

These companies are demonstrating deep commitment by expanding AI more broadly. However, commitment to AI does not necessarily translate into higher spending, with top performers reporting lower levels of investment in AI implementations (pilots and full deployments) than lower performers.

Almost all companies (95%) recognize the importance of data as a foundation for scaling AI, but the best performing companies are more focused on ensuring they have the right, relevant data assets to support their AI efforts. They are better at structuring and managing data, with 61% of companies using large, accurate data sets, and two-thirds of companies (67%) effectively integrating internal and external data sets.

In addition to using the right tools to gather the right insights from the right data assets, most top-performing organizations (71%) have a clearly defined AI strategy and operating model for scaling efforts from the outset. Additionally, more than two-thirds (67%) of organizations have business processes in place to integrate AI applications into the broader ecosystem, which provides the necessary agility needed to achieve lasting growth.

This strategic approach is further reinforced by another key characteristic of high-performing talent: assembling the right talent to drive performance. Rather than relying on one AI talent, 92% of businesses have strategically embedded multidisciplinary teams across the organization. This cross-functional approach also helps ensure diversity of thinking, which not only brings tangible benefits to considerations like responsible AI, but also maximizes the value the organization sees from its AI deployment.

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