One survey collected the perspectives of corporate leaders in the region for some trends

Based on a survey* of 1,224 C-suite executives across the Asia Pacific region (APAC) on Generative AI (GenAI) perspectives, some findings were reported by a cloud customer relationship management CRM software firm.

First, 83% of respondents indicated GenAI as one of the top three business priorities. Among them, 54% indicated their organization currently had a clear and defined GenAI strategy, while a further 40% indicated they had started working on a GenAI strategy for their business.

Second, respondents ranked the key motivations driving GenAI adoption: 44% cited innovative customer and employee experiences and also meeting customer expectations for faster, more-personalized experiences. Some 43% cited boosting productivity and efficiency as a key motivation.

Third, 37% indicated their view that the CEO is most responsible for ensuring GenAI is successfully integrated and teams enabled, while 25% cited the Chief Information Officer or Chief Technology Officer. Some 19% selected department heads as being the most responsible for this task. Also:

  • 42% of respondents selected information technology as having the biggest positive business impact from GenAI adoption, followed by 31% selecting operations, 30% selecting customer service, and 28% selecting research and insights.
  • 93% of respondents indicated their belief that there were still barriers to the adoption of GenAI in their business at the time of the survey, including:
    • Accessibility and inclusivity (37%)
    • Lack of skill-building or training opportunities (31%)
    • Use of incomplete customer/company data to train AI models (30%)
    • GenAI tools consistently producing inaccurate outputs (30%)
    • Cost of implementation of AI tools (30%)

According to Sujith Abraham, Senior Vice President and General Manager (ASEAN), Salesforce, the firm that commissioned the survey: “Every conversation I have with business leaders about AI inevitably comes back to data, and overcoming silos to increase the impact and accuracy of AI. Without building a cohesive view of the customer, GenAI initiatives will fall short,” while noting that data maturity will “differentiate each organization’s ecosystem of  autonomous agents, humans and AI, and how well they drive customer success at scale.”

*results to be launched soon in Sep 2024