Generative AI is among the top three business priorities for about nine in every 10 (87%) of Singapore C-suite executives, according to Salesforce.
Salesforce commissioned YouGov to conduct a double-anonymous online survey of C-suite leaders of large businesses in Singapore.
The research was conducted July 16-23rd and yielded responses from 221 C-suite executives across a variety of departments at companies with 250 or more employees.
Results show that almost half (48%) of respondents said their organisation currently had a clear and defined generative AI strategy, while a further 47% said they had started working on a generative AI strategy for their business.
Salesforce research suggests companies that haven’t already implemented AI risk losing significant ground to competitors, and this could happen more quickly than anticipated, as we move from chatbots to copilots to autonomous AI agents.
This next “great leap forward” will feature agentic systems, which can be thought of as trusted digital colleagues as opposed to digital assistants, according to Salesforce.
C-suite executives said the key motivations driving generative AI adoption were to be seen as being on the cutting edge of technology adoption (43%), remaining competitive (42%), and innovative customer and employee experiences (42%).
Singapore C-suite executives are bullish on generative AI integration and are taking decisive action to ensure its success.
The CEO is seen as being the most responsible for ensuring generative AI is successfully integrated (42%) and teams enabled, followed by the CIO/CTO (31%), and department heads (18%).
When asked where generative AI would have the biggest positive business impact, respondents identified IT (40%), operations (33%), finance (29%) and customer service (28%).
However, despite being widely used, 95% of C-suite executives said they believed there were still barriers to adoption of generative AI in their business today.
Data factors were high on the list of barriers, including accessibility and inclusivity (43%), lack of skill-building or training opportunities (33%), the use of incomplete customer/company data to train AI models (31%), lack of governance (31%), and generative AI producing inaccurate outputs (28%).
“Every conversation I have with business leaders about AI inevitably comes back to data and overcoming silos to increase the impact and accuracy of AI,” said Sujith Abraham, Salesforce SVP and general manager in ASEAN.
“Without building a cohesive view of the customer, generative AI initiatives will fall short,” he said.
