(From left) Ng with Raman and Chin at the unveiling of Malaysia findings of Microsoft AI Study 2019 at Kuala Lumpur.
KUCHING: By 2021, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will allow the rate of innovation to almost double (1.8-fold) and increase employee productivity improvements by 60 per cent in Malaysia, according to the country’s business leaders.
A study from Microsoft and IDC Asia/Pacific, ‘Future Ready Business: Assessing Asia Pacific’s Growth Potential Through AI’ surveyed 100 business leaders and 100 workers in Malaysia.
While seven in 10 business leaders polled agreed that AI is instrumental for their organisation’s competitiveness, only 26 per cent of organisations in Malaysia have embarked on their AI journeys. Those companies that have adopted AI expect it to increase their competitiveness by 2.2 times in 2021.
“Today, every company is a software company, and increasingly, every interaction is digital. To be successful in this new world, organisations need to be a fast adopter of best-in-class technology; and secondly, they need to build their own unique digital capabilities,” Microsoft Malaysia managing director K Raman said.
“AI is the defining technology of our time that significantly accelerates business transformation, enables innovation, boosts employee productivity, and ensures further growth. Economies and businesses that have yet to embark on their AI journey run a real risk of missing out on the competitive benefits that are enjoyed by leaders.”
For the organisations that have implemented AI initiatives, the top five business drivers to adopt the technology were (in priority order): Better customer engagements and higher competitiveness (both tied as the number one driver with 31 per cent respondents respectively); accelerated innovation and improved efficiency (12 per cent); as well as more productive employees (eight per cent).
“Last year, organisations that have adopted AI saw tangible improvements in those areas in the range of 17 per cent to 34 per cent,” IDC Asia Pacific Datacenter Group research director Jun-Fwu Chin said.
“They forecast further improvements of at least 1.6 times in the three-year horizon, with the biggest jump expected in accelerated innovation, higher competitiveness and better customer engagements.”
The study evaluated six dimensions critical to ensuring the success of a nation’s AI journey. It uncovered that Malaysia needs to focus on improving on all areas, particularly its data and investments in order to accelerate its AI journey.