GenAI adoption is a top priority for APAC midmarket

⇨ 94% of high-revenue growth midmarket businesses in APAC prioritize the adoption of Generative AI, signaling a strong trend towards AI integration in these organisations.

⇨ Key organisational priorities for midmarket companies include enhancing data security (52%) and decision-making accuracy (50%) through AI, alongside improving supplier networks (43%) for growth.

⇨ Despite the growing adoption of AI, challenges such as lack of quality data (37%) and system integration (33%) persist, posing risks like acting on incorrect information (36%) and talent retention (34%).

Ninety Four percent of midmarket businesses in Asia Pacific (APAC) with high revenue growth are more likely to put a moderate or strong priority on the adoption of Gen AI, eight percentage points ahead of those with lower revenue growth.

That’s the finding from recent SAP study of 3,500 people in five APJ markets where mid market was defined as companies with between 250 and 1,500 employees.

Adopting standard business applications of AI like machine learning for data analysis and predictive analytics and adopting Gen AI are top organisational priorities across APJ (92% moderate and high priority). Other key priorities include cybersecurity threats and addressing gaps in supply chains (all 92%).

Importantly, improving or expanding supplier and partner networks (43%) is the top priority for achieving growth. Yet, artificial intelligence is seen as a priority to transform organisational processes in every corner of the business.

Over half of APJ midmarket organisations surveyed place a high priority on AI to transform their data security and privacy (52%), and to drive accurate decision-making (50%). Other key areas AI can transform include creating new business models (48%), improving customer experience (48%), enhancing training and skills (48%), and optimising supply chains (47%).

AI is not new
AI is already in use to a moderate or strong degree in midmarket APJ businesses to create marketing and sales content, gathering market intelligence, app development and testing, and for customer or vendor interactions (all 83%).

“AI is not new. In fact, we’ve been using it for decades,” noted Utkarsh Maheshwari, Chief Partner Officer and Head of MidMarket, SAP Asia Pacific & Japan. “More than 27,000 customers are already using SAP Business AI today, including thousands across Asia Pacific and Japan. We’ve released more than 70 Generative AI use cases in the past year, already infused across our platforms and solutions, and we expect more than 100 use cases to be available by the end of 2024, which means that 80% of the most-commonly used scenarios will be AI enabled. The time to explore the benefits of Business AI is now.”

Quality data one of the biggest challenges – still
Yet challenges remain to drive growth in APJ midmarket businesses.

Respondents noted lack of quality data (37%) and lack of integration between systems (33%) as key internal challenges to growth, alongside issues with supply chains (40%) and siloes in their business (33%).
And data is also cited as an organisational risk when it comes to AI. Midmarket businesses in APJ said the biggest risks to their company from AI were acting upon incorrect information (36%), finding and retaining talent (34%), lack of transparency in results (34%) and insufficient data size and quality (31%).