Investments in generative AI and automation capabilities meet or exceed expected benefits

New research from Accenture (NYSE: ACN) found that three-in-four (74%) organizations have seen investments in generative AI and automation meet or exceed expectations, with 63% planning to increase their efforts and further strengthen these capabilities by 2026.

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According to the report, “Reinventing Enterprise Operations with Gen AI,” the number of companies that have fully modernized, AI-led processes has nearly doubled from 9% in 2023 to 16% in 2024. Compared to peers, these organizations achieve 2.5x higher revenue growth, 2.4x greater productivity and 3.3x greater success at scaling generative AI use cases. (Photo: Business Wire)

According to the report, “Reinventing Enterprise Operations with Gen AI,” the number of companies that have fully modernized, AI-led processes has nearly doubled from 9% in 2023 to 16% in 2024. Compared to peers, these organizations achieve 2.5x higher revenue growth, 2.4x greater productivity and 3.3x greater success at scaling generative AI use cases.

Findings also assessed that these “reinvention-ready” companies are moving faster and are amplifying the impact of generative AI across the business. Enabled by a digital core, these organizations have already developed generative AI use cases in IT (75%), marketing (64%), customer service (59%), finance (58%), R&D (34%) and other core functions.

While the research indicates that some companies have moved to the highest level of operations maturity, nearly two thirds (64%) still struggle to change the way they operate. For example, they lag behind on building a robust data foundation: 61% report that their data assets are not ready for generative AI yet and 70% find it hard to scale projects that use proprietary data.

The deep dependency on people is often overlooked: 82% of companies at the early stage of operations maturity have not applied a talent reinvention strategy, planned to meet workforce needs, or acquired new talent or training to prepare workers for generative AI-led workflows. In fact, many executives (78%) indicate that AI and generative AI are advancing too fast for their organization’s training efforts to keep pace.

“Most executives understand the urgency of reinventing with generative AI, but in many cases their enterprise operations are not ready to support large scale transformation,” said Arundhati Chakraborty, group chief executive of Accenture Operations. “Generative AI is more than the technology. It is a driver of a mindset change that impacts the entire enterprise. It requires organizations to have a strong digital core, data strategy and a well-defined roadmap to change the way they operate. Additionally, an end-to-end perspective leveraging talent, leading practices and effective collaboration between business and technology teams is essential for intelligent operations.”

The report highlights four key actions business leaders should take to advance their operations maturity:

• Implement a centralized data governance and domain-centric approach to data modernization. Connect processes and tools across functions to ensure people have a clear understanding of how to create, handle and consume data, which should be structured in a standardized way to be accessed by AI tools across the business.
• Embrace a talent-first reinvention strategy. Reinvent work and rethink processes and entire workflows to gain a clear view of where generative AI can have the most impact in serving customers, supporting people and achieving business outcomes.
• Ensure business and tech teams co-own reinvention. Collaboration drives innovation as both teams jointly own how assets, platforms and products are developed to leverage the full capabilities of generative AI, enterprise wide.
• Adopt leading processes to drive business outcomes. Apply cloud-based process mining to calibrate internal and external benchmarks so it’s easier to visualize process gaps and get clear insights into operational inefficiencies or opportunities for improvement.

Explore the report in Accenture’s thought leadership app, Foresight, and get a personalized feed of recent latest insights, data, case studies and more at http://www.accenture.com/foresight.

About the Research

For the report, “Reinventing Enterprise Operations with Gen AI,” Accenture surveyed 2,000 executives across 12 countries and 15 industries. The latest research assessed the progression of business operations maturity across four criteria: Reinvention-ready, Insight-driven, Automated and Foundational —each underpinned by more advanced ways of working with data, automation, common AI and generative AI. The study then combined survey responses with externally validated data across multiple dimensions of value, including financial, experience, sustainability, talent, inclusion and diversity, innovation and agility.

The revenue growth comparison was done by leveraging financial performance data for companies in our survey (for companies with available data and after performing appropriate data quality assurance). For each intelligent operations group, Accenture looked at overall revenue in a given fiscal year and, based on this metric, calculated the group revenue growth ratio.

About Accenture

Accenture is a leading global professional services company that helps the world’s leading organizations build their digital core, optimize their operations, accelerate revenue growth and enhance services—creating tangible value at speed and scale. We are a talent- and innovation-led company with 774,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Technology is at the core of change today, and we are one of the world’s leaders in helping drive that change, with strong ecosystem relationships. We combine our strength in technology and leadership in cloud, data and AI with unmatched industry experience, functional expertise and global delivery capability. Our broad range of services, solutions and assets across Strategy & Consulting, Technology, Operations, Industry X and Song, together with our culture of shared success and commitment to creating 360° value, enable us to help our clients reinvent and build trusted, lasting relationships. We measure our success by the 360° value we create for our clients, each other, our shareholders, partners and communities. Visit us at www.accenture.com.

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