Businesses in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) are already reporting notable productivity improvements from utilizing AI, according to a recent survey from IBM.
Many of these businesses anticipate returns on their investments (ROI) within the next year. However, the results indicate that when it comes to using AI to increase productivity, public sector organizations and small to medium-sized enterprises (SME) are lagging larger, private sector companies.
According to a recent IBM analysis titled “The Race for ROI,” which was created in collaboration with Census wide and polled 3,500 senior executives in ten different countries, 66% of participants claimed that their companies have significantly increased operational productivity using AI.
A further 42% of respondents on average anticipated achieving ROI within 12 months across cost reduction (41%), time savings (45%), increased revenue (37%), employee satisfaction (42%), and increased Net Promoter Score (43%).
Additionally, roughly one in five respondents stated their organization has already achieved ROI goals from AI-driven productivity initiatives.
With 92% of leaders anticipating that agentic AI would yield quantifiable ROI within two years, further productivity gains are anticipated from the implementation of AI Agents.
The survey found that software development and IT (32%), customer service (32%), and procurement (27%) are the business sectors with the largest AI-driven productivity increases.
The top three advantages of increased productivity, according to executives, were improved decision-making (50%), increased operational efficiency (55%), and increased worker skills including automating repetitive jobs (48%).
But not every kind of organization benefits equally. Only 55% of SMEs reported productivity increases using AI, compared to 72% of large firms surveyed.
According to the study, just 55% of public sector businesses have reported notable productivity gains thus far, suggesting that they are still in the early stages of achieving AI’s full potential.