Artificial intelligence is reshaping how businesses manage their operations in areas such as customer service, workforce management, inventory control, market analysis, supply chain optimization, etc.
AI usage in business spans a spectrum, from simple tasks such as document processing, resume screening, invoicing, and payroll, to more complex functions such as pattern identification, data analysis, content design, and optimization.
Artificial intelligence is no longer a speculative concept. It is an essential force in today’s business environment.
We asked three questions regarding artificial intelligence:
Which of the following best describes the status of AI adoption in your business?
- AI is not an appropriate tool for our business.
- We can foresee using AI, but we haven’t started experimenting with it yet.
- We are at the early stages of experimenting with AI, or are pilot testing.
- We have implemented or operationalized AI in our business.
About 37% of our respondents are either pilot testing or are at the early stages of experimenting with AI. Another 37% of the respondents foresee AI usage, but have not yet implemented it in the place of business. The remaining respondents do not consider AI to be essential to their workplace.
“Primarily using ChatGPT for administrative type activities,” one respondent says. “We might use it for meeting note capturing but we haven’t investigated options as it relates to our cybersecurity requirements,” another suggests. “Estimating and web chat is about all we’ve explored,” said another respondent.
Does your business provide re-skilling opportunities to your employees to learn how to use AI at work?
A minority of our respondents (about 13%) provide AI learning opportunities for their employees.
“Organization not big enough to use AI in a significant change/overhaul kind of way,” one respondent says. “Not too applicable yet at this point,” said another respondent.
Which of the following barriers does your business face regarding AI adoption? Check all that apply.
- We lack the expertise to implement and manage AI systems effectively.
- We are concerned about the ethics of AI, for either its impact on jobs or the need to protect user data, or both.
- Our regulatory landscape is complex and makes adopting AI difficult.
- We lack the technical infrastructure to adopt AI.
- Our employees are resistant to change.
- We have not found the right use cases for AI.
- We do not buy into the idea that AI is important for our success, or at least that it’s not as high a priority as others.
Fifty percent of our respondents do not consider AI essential to their success and do not view it as a high priority. Forty percent of the firms in our sample report lack of expertise as a barrier to implementing and managing AI effectively. Twenty percent of the businesses indicate that the regulatory landscape makes AI adoption more complicated. Ten percent cite ethical concerns (data protection/employment impacts) as a deterring factor, and another 10% face employee resistance to change.
“Need to gain knowledge of AI to see how we can all use it,” one respondent says. “We may utilize some AI in marketing although limited,” another replies.
The relatively cautious approach to AI adoption — with 74% either not yet implementing or not considering it essential — may reflect the area’s business composition and size profile. Smaller businesses face genuine barriers to AI implementation, including expertise gaps and infrastructure limitations, which could affect regional productivity growth over time.
For now, adoption appears to be an operational efficiency tool rather than a growth driver, consistent with our broader observations about investments aimed at reducing costs in the face of regulatory and wage pressures.
