Seattle — June 24, 2020

Companies looking to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic should focus on accelerating their adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve resilience and prepare for the future, according to Avanade, the leading digital innovator on the Microsoft ecosystem.

Newly published research carried out for Avanade by independent research firm Vanson Bourne, shows that only one percent of companies are fully “AI Mature”. But those who are successful in fully integrating AI into their businesses can experiencing up to five times return on investment through a combination of increased productivity, improved process efficiency and lower operating costs.

To help companies assess where they are on their AI journey and rethink how to accelerate it, Avanade has developed a specialised tool that measures an organisation’s AI maturity across five key areas of AI adoption, including:

• AI Strategy
• AI Talent & Culture
• Digital Ethics
• Data Supply Chain and Analytics
• Technology and Process

The tool then uses the assessment information, together with data collected from the Avanade AI Maturity Survey of 1700 senior business and IT decision-makers across 15 countries, to plot the company’s position and highlight key areas to develop and insert AI for business optimisation.

“While uncertainties around the human impact of AI have diminished significantly in recent years, most companies are still grappling with how to implement it to achieve meaningful, sustainable business outcomes,” said Simon Thomas, Avanade Data and AI lead. “With business resilience currently being tested to its fullest, organisations need to rethink and accelerate their integration of AI to take full advantage of it benefits, whatever the future holds. Our AI assessment tool can help them start and take that journey.”

Avanade’s research showed that while most companies recognise the potential of AI to have a positive impact on their businesses, many executives are struggling to successfully implement it:

• AI Strategy: 95% of respondents find AI is critical but a third (32%) cite building AI strategy as one of the top three barriers, and a similar amount (35%) are looking externally to get help creating their strategy.
• Talent and Culture: 80% of respondents agree that business culture and change are THE make or break for AI’s long-term success, and over half (54%) are struggling with recruiting AI talent and/or shifting their culture.
• Digital Ethics: 96% find that ensuring “digital ethics by design” is necessary to implement AI and 66% are implementing a digital ethics framework.
• Technology and Process: 61% of respondents have experimented with automation and advanced analytics, with half of those using computer vision (35%) or virtual agents (34%).
• Data Supply Chain: 65% of organisations say that their data quality needs improvement.

Summaries highlighting each of the five areas explored by Avanade’s research are available on Avanade.com.