Tata study: What does AI, IoT, predictive analytics and blockchain mean?

According to the survey, decision-makers in Europe and North America are more optimistic about the potential of digital solutions to increase their competitiveness compared to their competitors in Asia and the Middle East.

Nevertheless, the perceived high cost of innovation, the lack of skills, and the threat of cyberattacks are proving to be major obstacles to digital transformation worldwide.

The biannual study aims to assess the performance and potential of digital infrastructure in the global digital economy by tracking the views of decision makers on emerging technologies.

The results of this study are based on over 1600 business decision makers from companies with over 250 employees or operations in more than one country.

These respondents operate in ten different markets: Germany, France, UK, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, USA and Canada.

The first survey was completed in October 2018 and asked participants a mix of questions assessing the impact of technology over the past six months.

Board members and C-level respondents have drastically different views on the readiness of new technology adoption than the rest of their organization.

The study found that 41 percent of board members and 33 percent of senior executives believe they lead their industry in adopting new technologies, compared with only 18 percent of directors and 14 percent of department heads.

Skepticism with AI

German decision-makers remain more skeptical about AI than their international peers. Regardless of where their company is on the digital transformation journey, decision makers are firmly focused on the positive impact of the technology.

According to the study, they see a significant and positive impact from IoT (48 percent), predictive analytics (43 percent) and AI (43 percent). Interestingly, decision-makers in Europe and the U.S. tend to be less optimistic about AI than their Asian counterparts.

For example, decision makers in Germany rate the positive impact of AI as only slight (41 percent), to no impact or even negative (29 percent), while Indian decision makers see it as significant or slightly positive (95 percent).

Perception versus reality

The study should also be a wake-up call for companies.

"It is becoming clear that there is a gap between perception and reality that is emerging as the pace of innovation increases between different levels in organizations"

says Chief Digital Officer Srinivasan of Tata Communications.

"This discrepancy demonstrates the need for CEOs and business unit leaders to better inform the CEO of any challenges they face in adopting new technologies such as IoT and AI.

CEOs should ask their teams more questions and not get carried away by the hype of digital transformation. This reality check will help companies make the most of the latest technological innovations."

It is interesting to note that German companies set the same priorities as their international competitors, but still lag behind in terms of raw numbers in implementation.

Decision-makers in Asia and the Middle East in particular derive greater benefits from the use of these technologies than in Europe and North America. For example, 41 percent of decision makers in Singapore see new revenue streams from the use of IoT, compared to only 24 percent in Germany and 19 percent in the UK.