Thinking about using artificial intelligence to boost your bottom lines in the fresh produce industry? You’re not alone.
According to a new report by Tata Consultancy Services, more than 85% of 1,300 senior business leaders polled in 24 countries said they are using AI to boost their revenue streams and create new opportunities.
The TCS AI for Business Study also revealed that 70% of businesses surveyed said they are trying to put more muscle behind AI to drive innovation than in other areas, such as productivity improvement and cost optimization.
However, three-quarters of business leaders – there were 111 UK and Irish companies taking part in the study – said that “creativity and strategic thinking” will still drive success in the next 3-5 years. In fact, only 5% of UK leaders said AI is transformative for them at this time.
“We are now entering an era of wide-and-deep enterprise AI adoption,” said Dr Harrick Vin, Chief Technology Officer at Mumbai-based TCS. “Enterprises, however, are realizing that the path to production for AI solutions is not easy, and that building an AI-mature enterprise is a marathon, not a sprint. Our AI study has confirmed this sentiment; it has also highlighted that enterprises feel underprepared to deploy AI solutions at scale as well as to manage the profound shifts in the roles of people and ways of working resulting from such deployments.”
Despite the struggles for full adoption, more than half of business leaders expressed “excitement” and “optimism” over the possibilities of AI. Around 45% say that half of their employees will be using generative AI in the near future, and a robust 40% say that they will move in that direction.
Two-third agree that we are entering a new future of business – where AI will run side-by-side to boost human productivity and interaction.
More than half – get this – believe AI will be more powerful for business than smartphones and the internet.
“When calibrated for accuracy and harnessed responsibly, GenAI makes the computational power of the data, cloud, and AI come alive,” Sivaraman Ganesan, Head, AI.Cloud Business Unit, TCS, said. “Add in human ingenuity, and organizations can create a new paradigm for the modern marketplace. As a result, today’s enterprises will deliver new stakeholder and customer value like never before – incrementally, through assist and augment efforts, and exponentially as transformation initiatives.”
There are no doubt challenges facing business leaders as they make the big leap, according to TCS, which identified security, the shift to automation, investing in research, lack of IT readiness and compliance as concerns.
“Nearly a quarter [of businesses] haven’t even moved beyond the initial exploratory phase,” Vin said. “Nearly three-fourths say they don’t have the right metrics. The survey also highlights the need for businesses to take a strategic approach to AI adoption and develop the right performance indicators to measure the impact of the technology on their business.”
