Dive Brief:
- C-suite leaders are eager to move forward with AI initiatives this year despite workforce challenges, ROI uncertainty and concerns about market volatility, according to an Accenture report published Thursday. The firm conducted separate surveys of 3,650 C-suite executives and 3,350 employees in November and December, revealing contrasting sentiments about the technology’s impact.
- Nearly 9 in 10 executives plan to increase AI investments in the coming year and 46% said they would do so even if a potential AI bubble were to burst, the report found. More than two-thirds of C-suite respondents used AI tools daily in their work, an eight-percentage point uptick from a similar survey fielded in March.
- “CEOs and C-suite leaders are confident that AI will drive growth, and most are doubling down on investment even as ROI remains uncertain,” Muqsit Ashraf, group chief executive of strategy at Accenture,” said in the report. “The real barrier to unlocking AI’s value is no longer technology; it’s bringing people along the journey. AI doesn’t create impact or value in isolation.”
Dive Insight:
As executives find high-value AI use cases in their own work, strategies are shifting. More than three-quarters of C-suite leaders view the technology as a revenue driver rather than a means to reduce costs. Only 12% cited ROI as the immediate goal of their organization’s AI investments.
“There is clear consensus across a range of stakeholders that AI is a transformational technology, that the value potential is multi-trillion dollars and we are nowhere near unlocking or capturing away even a small fraction of that value,” Ashraf told Channel Dive.
However, there are a number of hurdles yet to be overcome as adoption progresses. More than one-third of executives cited data and core digital system upgrades as a priority for scaling AI. Nearly one-quarter said their organization would benefit from access to skilled talent and training.
Accenture also identified a disconnect between executive enthusiasm and employee experiences with the technology. Despite C-suite confidence in their organization’s AI roadmap, only 18% of employees surveyed felt leadership had a clear vision for navigating change as agentic AI tools begin automating manual processes.
The rise of AI agents has been disruptive, the employee survey found. Only 32% of respondents said they regularly worked with AI agents, a decrease from 42% in a similar study conducted in May and June. More than half reported productivity losses caused by low-quality and misleading AI outputs.
“You overcome that by training your models better, through reinforcement learning and by creating domain specific models and better data foundations,” Ashraf said.
The red flags reflect growing pains that can be overcome by fine tuning AI tools and enterprise investment priorities, said Ashraf, who was one of the executives tasked with managing an internal pivot to generative AI.
Accenture committed $3 billion to AI in 2023, embarking on a massive upskilling and talent recruitment initiative with the initial goal of 80,000 AI-skilled employees. The company added $1 billion to the multiyear push the following year, when it acquired digital learning platform Udacity.
Ashraf said that nearly everyone at Accenture has received basic training in AI and many are moving on to more advanced AI proficiencies. A lot of companies initially invested heavily in AI technology and not enough in employee training, he said.
“The equation needs to be flipped on its head, where a third goes into tech and two-thirds goes to the workforce and the people changes that need to happen,” Ashraf said.
