As IDC finds 45% of Saudi CIOs plan to significantly increase their investment in AI
To thrive in the face of challenges such as supply chain constraints, critical skills shortages, and slowing global economic growth, regional businesses will need to adopt cloud platforms that enable them to leverage AI, data and automation solutions, according to experts speaking at the recent Riyadh SAP Business Transformation Tour, organized by SAP.
Held under the theme ‘Navigating the Winds of Change in a Digital-First World’, the event demonstrated how SAP cloud solutions that embed automation, data, and AI capabilities into technology can address today’s most pressing challenges by bringing increased resilience, proactive strategic decision-making, a more cohesive workforce, and even improved customer interactions thanks to Natural Language Processing.
“Saudi organizations are stepping on the gas pedal of digital transformation in alignment with the kingdom’s rapid national transformation. As a result, public cloud adoption is growing, and is combining with significant private cloud investments to create hybrid multi-cloud environments,” remarked Ranjit Rajan, VP & Head of Research, IDC META at International Data Corporation (IDC).
Contextualizing technology’s role
“Leveraging AI, automation and data analytics through our cloud-based solutions helps build resilient organizations able to withstand the headwinds of a global slowdown, currency fluctuations, and geopolitical situations that impact the Gulf region. We will showcase how companies of any size can easily embrace these solutions by moving swiftly to the cloud through adopting RISE with SAP or GROW with SAP,” affirmed Fahd Nawwab, Vice President, SAP, KSA.
This opens the door to solutions such as SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) and SAP S/4HANA to provide greater visibility on all aspects of operations and deliver data and automation capabilities that enable agile, effective responses to changes in supply chains and market conditions.
Growth of AI, Big Data and analytics in KSA
Data analytics, AI/machine learning and automation technologies are rapidly overlapping, merging and driving adoption for each other. Adoption of AI and machine learning is expected to accelerate in Saudi Arabia to across several use cases such as augmented customer service, recommendation engines, cyber threat intelligence, IT optimization, fraud detection and many others, opined Rajan.
More than 45% of Saudi CIOs surveyed by IDC are planning to significantly increase their investment in AI in the next 12 months or so. The advances in Generative AI will further boost AI adoption and drive new use cases related to customer and operational productivity and excellence.
“The growth of AI goes hand in hand with the global transition to cloud, and it is changing SAP services for the better. Companies that delay implementing cloud deployments of their business processes will also be missing out on the power of AI. The potential benefits of AI technology are almost infinite in the world of commerce and industry,” concluded Nawwab.
