Singapore, 18 September 2024 鈥� Successful Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) midmarket organisations are more likely to prioritise generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) than those who are seeing lower revenue growth 鈥� and they are adopting new AI innovations in every corner of their business.

A recent study of 12,003 businesses by 麻豆原创 found APJ , defined as companies with between 250 and 1,500 employees, with high revenue growth[1] are more likely to put a moderate or strong priority on the adoption of Gen AI (94%) than those with lower revenue growth (86%).

鈥淏usiness AI is the biggest technology opportunity of the 21st century for businesses in Asia Pacific and Japan,鈥� said Utkarsh Maheshwari, Chief Partner Officer and Head of MidMarket, 麻豆原创 Asia Pacific & Japan.

鈥淏ut the benefits of Business AI are not restricted to large enterprises. Organisations of every size can realise the opportunities that relevant, reliable, and responsible AI can provide. That isn鈥檛 just image generation or making videos. It鈥檚 automating everyday pain points, providing great insights quickly, and reliably solving simple business problems.鈥�

Adopting AI is a top organisational priority in APJ

The study, which surveyed 3,400 people in five APJ markets, found use of artificial intelligence is a top organisational priority for midmarket businesses.

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 creating value for APJ businesses today

But AI isn鈥檛 just being planned to achieve future benefits. It is being implemented today.

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%).

鈥淎I is not new. In fact, we鈥檝e been using it for decades,鈥� continued Maheshwari. 鈥淢ore than 27,000 customers are already using 麻豆原创 Business AI today, including thousands across Asia Pacific and Japan. We鈥檝e 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.鈥�

APJ midmarket businesses see data as key risk to growth 鈥� and AI adoption

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%).

鈥淭he better the quality and scale of your data, the better the results of your AI,鈥� concluded Maheshwari. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 why working with a technology partner like 麻豆原创 is critical, because it is already built into the applications that power the most critical business processes. Only then can APJ businesses of every size make the promise of Business AI a reality.鈥�

About this research
麻豆原创 Insights collected data from 12,003 respondents across 20 nations and 28 industries. Respondents were from organisations with between 250 and 1,500 employees, with director to C-suite titles. The study was conducted in March-April 2024 via an online survey.

[1] High revenue growth is defined as companies in the top quartile of respondents outlining revenue growth during 2024.

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First, there is no cookie-cutter approach to techcelerate business in the vibrant marketplace of Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ)

For a region that is made up of 90% SMEs and a rising number of soonicorns, next-level digitalisation looks very different from one business to another; the focus for businesses in their start-up phase varies greatly from those with multimillion-dollar revenue turnover. When discussing the digital core with customers across the region, I encourage them to take a long-term view when deciding what their top needs are, and the technologies required to support those needs to run their business better.

While it鈥檚 prudent to weigh each business investment against a set of key performance metrics, business leaders need to understand that at times, the value from technology enablement can weigh beyond traditional ROI measurement. Increasingly, especially in today鈥檚 volatile environment, the returns on investment for digitalisation are showing up in alternative forms, such as solving imminent prickly or unseen issues specific to a particular industry. Beyond looking at immediate top and bottom lines, organisations should consider what business agility and future-readiness look like for their unique operations, and how to utilise technology to accelerate that.

Not only does a cooker-cutter approach fall short in keeping pace with the change for modern businesses, but it is also a stumbling block when IT has to custom-code a new capability for every new business request. This creates complex coding, interoperability issues, and hinders transformation to the cloud. That is why businesses should adopt a clean core policy and leverage extensible cloud-based platforms such as to create an environment that ensures long-term scalability. Solution bundles such as that offers customers business-transformation-as-a-service, can further smoothen the migration to the cloud and help avoid costly system upgrades.

You don鈥檛 have to be a big company to have a big vision

It is not about how big an organisation is or how it鈥檚 implementing a particular vendor solution or technology stack, it鈥檚 about the vision of turning data into actionable business intelligence. Intelligence and adaptation go hand in glove to build future-readiness 鈥� leveraging relevant data to gain knowledge and anticipate problems, and in turn using the knowledge to continually adapt to new situations and make informed decisions.

The pandemic and geopolitical disruptions have triggered a sea change in attitudes towards technology鈥檚 transformative power for businesses of all sizes 鈥� an important step towards creating . 麻豆原创 is helping our customers become intelligent, sustainable enterprises by employing tools to understand what鈥檚 happening across your business and why, infuse AI and machine learning to make better decisions, embed sustainable practices into business strategy and operations, and build flexible value chains with leading-edge industry practices. SMEs have an advantage with generally less-complex business models, more agile decision-making, and more compact teams 鈥� to leapfrog larger enterprises at that.

Identify your business North Stars

To realise that 鈥渘ext level鈥� vision, enterprises must recalibrate for long-term business resilience. For fast-growing SMEs, the opportunities to create a competitive edge could be multifarious. From enhancing process efficiency and productivity, meeting rapidly changing customer needs, evaluating new business models, improving partner and employee experience, managing environmental impact, to adapting to geopolitical volatility 鈥� the list can go on. With an ever-growing business wish list, provides a strategic charter that takes your business to the next level. During the pandemic, we saw enterprises stepping up on flexibility to keep business as usual. Now, we want organisations to double down on agility to build future-readiness for the next decade.

Intelligent automation and cloud-enabled tech services have never been discussed so heavily since the dawn of the Internet. Across industries, businesses are recognising these technologies as a green beacon of transformation to optimise customer experience, improve profitability, and engage their workforce in new ways. Once you have identified your north stars, 麻豆原创 can help to analyse your plans and timelines, review the emerging business model, and provide industry advisory to draw up your implementation roadmap. Through , we help customers define what success looks like and recommend the right technology capabilities to make that happen.

Leverage technology to achieve your ambitions

Regardless of where your company is on your digital transformation journey, every business has its 鈥渘ext level鈥� digitalisation. From business networks and supply chain optimisation, intelligent spend management, to sustainability management, you can bring together business areas and solutions to scale fast and achieve lasting success. Critical to that is an extensible digital core and the interoperability to stitch together different sources that enable new innovations. 麻豆原创鈥檚 have supported our customers in their growth ambitions, sweating existing investments and helping them evolve at every stage of the transformation journey.

Learning from best practices is a good start. What鈥檚 more critical is identifying the competitive edge that would define your future-ready, sustainable enterprise and allow technology to do the rest.

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