IT services and consulting firm Avanade launched the Build Beyond Limits: AI Reality Report, which revealed a growing gap between organizations' confidence in their AI maturity and the extent to which they have fundamentally transformed how they operate.
The global survey found that 77% of organizations described themselves as Established, Advanced or AI-first in their AI journey, while 72% had high confidence their teams are using AI effectively. And yet, only 18% said they have fundamentally reshaped how their teams operate around AI, and 75% believed organizations publicly present themselves as more AI mature than they really are.
The study surveyed 3,600 business decision makers across 11 markets, including North America, EMEA and Asia-Pacific and Japan. Respondents were from organizations with more than $500 million global annual revenue across financial services, consumer goods and services, energy, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, distribution and transport.
In the U.S., the findings suggested organizations are applying AI to day-to-day work, while the broader opportunity lies in changing how work is organized and how value is created. Realizing more of AI’s value will depend on connecting initiatives to business priorities and redesigning workflows where they can make a difference. That challenge is reflected in both how organizations are directing AI investment and how they assess its financial returns.
Key findings of U.S. respondents:
- 75% said too much of their organization’s AI investment is focused on incremental improvements rather than transformational opportunities.
- 65% said AI has yet to deliver financial returns that justify the investment and effort.
- 62% said their organization has yet to formally calculate AI’s financial return and have the results reviewed by finance or senior leadership.
- Just 7% said their organization intends to use AI to create fundamentally new operating models, revenue streams or businesses over the next 12 months.
U.S. organizations also continue to face the tension of scaling quickly while simultaneously strengthening oversight. 82% said they need to authorize AI initiatives more quickly to remain competitive, while an equal share wanted a more effective approach to approving, monitoring and controlling AI use. This tasks leaders with the important step of building visibility into how AI is deployed and what results it delivers, without slowing the innovation process down.
“There is a dangerous gap opening up between AI confidence and AI reality,” Avanade CEO Chris Howarth said. “ Confidence is not the problem. Ambition is not the problem. The problem is that most organizations are using AI to improve a business model that AI should be replacing. Deploying AI is not the same as transforming with it. The organizations that will define the next decade are not asking how to do what they already do faster. They are asking what becomes possible when you build the business around AI from the ground up; new ways of working, new ways of creating value, entirely new things that were not possible before. That is the opportunity most organizations are leaving on the table.”
