What Businesses with AI in Production Can Teach Those Lagging Behind

Businesses are in different stages with their artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Even today, after many years of evaluating AI, only one third of organizations have actually put AI into production (31%1). Organizations that started somewhat later are currently prototyping their AI solutions (20%). Companies that only recently came on board with AI are experimenting with AI technologies for their business cases (25%). And a relatively large portion (24%) have only just begun evaluating AI for their business cases.

The urgency to start using AI differs by industry, by company size, and by company strategy. But IDC believes that we have now reached a stage at which every organization must have a solid approach to incorporating AI into its processes and/or offerings to remain viable in the coming years. This means that organizations in the last group — those that are still evaluating — are in trouble in terms of their capabilities and their ability to compete.

What can this group do to catch up faster? Are they doomed to make the same mistakes the front-runners made in the last several years as they ramped up their AI stance? IDC believes that this can be avoided if those that are lagging (we will call them “AI evaluators”) inform themselves about what those that are ahead and in production (we will call them “AI users”) are doing today.

The purpose of this paper is to compare what those in production with AI do differently compared with those still evaluating, so as to support the latter with these best practices as they move forward on their AI journey. It will also very briefly discuss a few Dell solutions that can support organizations’ AI initiatives.