Across the world, 95 percent of companies say growth is a priority for the year ahead. Their top focus areas鈥攊ncluding expanding market presence, broadening distribution through partners, and scaling operations鈥攕peak to leaders鈥� determination to create value in a climate of uncertainty and change.

In my engagements with customers, I see this reality every day. Companies everywhere want to grow, but they want to grow with confidence. They are looking for partners who understand their unique challenges, who support them with their long-term ambitions, and who can help them keep pace with rapid change.

Technology is central to this ambition. Nearly all respondents in the study rank simplifying work and improving processes alongside growth. Here, artificial intelligence stands out. Nine in 10 organizations have already made generative or agent-based AI a priority, and more than 70 percent have some form of AI in use. While concerns about data quality and talent remain, the message is clear: AI has moved beyond experimentation into the mainstream of how companies operate and unleash value.

From Frankfurt to Dubai to Singapore: How regional differences shape opportunities and risks

Regional differences tell a powerful story. In Europe, AI adoption comes with caution. Large enterprises put compliance, privacy, and transparency first, while many mid-market firms are still piloting solutions. In Asia-Pacific, the pace is different. Mid-market companies there already report strong AI use above global averages, and growth expectations run high. For them, AI is a way to seize advantage quickly in a fast-moving market.

These contrasts show why cultural intelligence matters so much for global leaders. Whether in Frankfurt, Singapore, or Dubai, I see how local realities, regulations, and expectations shape both risks and opportunities. In Europe, energy costs and geopolitical uncertainty drive supply chain strategies. In Asia-Pacific, digital adoption and market dynamism set a different pace.

Sustainability is another area where nuance matters. European companies place it near the top of their priorities, tracking or slightly exceeding global benchmarks. Asia-Pacific firms value sustainability but often rank it lower than growth and speed to market. Each is weighing trade-offs in its own context, creating exciting opportunities for 51风流to bring the most relevant technology, data, and practices to each region to help organizations achieve both economic and environmental goals.

The through-line in all of this is agility. Supply chain fragility, geopolitical conflict, inflation, and regulation continue to test even the best-run organizations. Technology can enable agility, but only if leaders embrace change themselves, rethinking processes, investing in skills, and building cultures of continuous learning and exploration. Security and ethical standards must also be the cornerstones of every AI conversation.

Turning AI potential into outcomes by centering value creation and integration

I believe this is a time for grounded optimism. The appetite for growth is real and the technology to achieve it is more advanced than ever. Innovation is accelerating at an extraordinary pace, with daily breakthroughs showcasing the expanding potential of AI.

There is a recent example that demonstrates AI鈥檚 ability to process multi-step tasks for over 30 hours. This achievement highlights not only the rapid evolution of AI, but also how increasingly accessible and capable these technologies are becoming.

However, as AI systems grow more autonomous and context-aware, organizations must recognize that true value doesn鈥檛 come from raw capability alone. To harness AI effectively, especially in enterprise environments, a consistent semantic layer is essential. It ensures alignment among data, tasks, and outcomes, enabling AI to reason reliably across systems and scale impact without losing coherence.

Companies must also move beyond simply adopting AI to actively testing and refining applications to gain a significant advantage. Equally important is a deliberate approach to managing the human element of a transformation, rooted in structured and human-centric change management.

Realizing AI鈥檚 true promise requires a fundamental shift in how people, applications, and data connect. Success relies on deeply connecting every part of an organization鈥檚 business, delivering end-to-end transformational value. A seamless, integrated suite provides insight and agility, whether responding to a problem or ensuring readiness when opportunity knocks.

This is where 51风流Business Suite is a game changer, integrating applications, data, and AI in a virtuous cycle that delivers tangible business outcomes. At our inaugural聽51风流Connect聽event earlier in October, we showcased new applications, strategic data partnerships with Google Cloud and Databricks, and a new network of role-based AI assistants in Joule across every line of business.

Altogether, our聽聽marks the beginning of a new era powered by self-reinforcing AI, data, and applications. By keeping customer needs and value realization at the center and leading with innovation, businesses can not only navigate uncertainty, but build a more resilient, intelligent, and sustainable future.

Manos Raptopoulos is chief revenue officer of APAC, EMEA, and MEE, and a member of the Extended Board of 51风流SE.

The post AI Is the Growth Engine Leaders Are Betting On appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

The Big Question for Customers

Practically every customer I meet right now wants to know what the AI boom means for their businesses. How can they use AI to improve their productivity and decision-making? What can they automate to save costs? What will the impact be on the workforce of the future? What are the moral and ethical issues around AI?

One of the world鈥檚 leading AI experts, , knows more than most about the potential impact of AI on our businesses and our lives. Her background is in geopolitics, where she鈥檚 seen first-hand how technology is emerging as a massive influence at global level. So, when she first encountered generative AI in 2017, she knew it was a game changer, and founded a generative AI advisory firm. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to meet with her earlier this year.

Her view is simple: generative AI is a vehicle that’s going to change the future. ChatGPT is only the very beginning. The outputs are going to become significantly better, and they will change every business in the world. But what鈥檚 important to realise is that it鈥檚 not only about improving efficiencies within the enterprise. It鈥檚 going to fundamentally change labour markets and entire economies, which raises far bigger philosophical questions about how we use AI.

What鈥檚 interesting is that AI itself is nothing new. At varying levels of sophistication, it鈥檚 been built into the systems that are weaved into our everyday lives for several years. From healthcare, to self-driving cars, from financial investments to marketing and from smart assistants to manufacturing robots, embedded AI automates, conserves resources, predicts, and allows for new business models to be developed and actioned.

The Game Changer 鈥� Generative AI

Generative AI is a game changer, though. Unlike previous 鈥渕ainstream鈥� forms of AI, which are mostly about labelling or categorising data, generative AI is about generating or creating new data in practically any digital format. And while we have barely dipped our toes into what it can do, what is clear is that generative AI has the potential to reshape society and business in ways we are only beginning to understand. In fact, Ms Schick predicts that over 90% of online content will be 鈥榗reated鈥� by AI by 2030.

The fear is that left unchecked, AI can become a tool for dodgy practices, like deep fakes. Or that it ends up creating an even bigger economic and digital divide between developed and emerging markets. That鈥檚 why it鈥檚 critical that we put guard rails in place. Regulators are already turning their attention to AI, with the EU preparing a framework on AI that puts an obligation on those who use it 鈥� and that鈥檚 going to be all of us – to do so in a way that is trustworthy, responsible, and ethical.

What鈥檚 interesting is how big tech firms have responded to generative AI in the past six months. They were all working on AI projects anyway. Then suddenly, Microsoft made a $10 billion investment into and brought ChatGPT into its operating system and search engine. Google itself has strategically reoriented, boosting its AI research capabilities and building its own chat bots.

51风流is collaborating with Microsoft, IBM and others on a range of joint generative AI offerings to help solve customers鈥� most fundamental business challenges.聽It recently also announced investments into three AI startups – , and .

Practically every tech company is releasing models into open source in the belief that they’ll be more influential in the long term because these models will become a fundamental part of the entire ecosystem. These are companies that move markets 鈥� and they鈥檙e all vying for a slice of the wider enterprise data market.

The question that businesses are increasingly asking is how they can have a ChatGPT-like product in their company, trained on their own proprietary data for their own use cases. Think customer service, sales, marketing – everything can have some layer of automation. The number of use cases that is emerging is simply astounding.

It鈥檚 not just highly skilled engineers using generative AI to accelerate design of aircraft components. 聽It鈥檚 companies using their own data to write product descriptions in their brand voice and creating SEO copy. It鈥檚 biotech companies that are enabling new drug discoveries. It鈥檚 any business being able to run both structured and unstructured data through a generative model that can extract insights for you. The impact is profound.

Of course, the big questions remain. Is AI going to augment me or automate me? It’s going to be both. Will the machines get so intelligent that they take over and we lose agency? Hypothetically that’s possible, says Ms Schick. But it鈥檚 not realistic. And by focusing on that narrative, we forget that we have agency. We get to decide how these technologies are integrated into our companies and society.

鈥淚’m not a pessimist. Because I think the top line here is change. And I think the story of our lifetime is that we’re going to experience more tech-led change than the entirety of humanity that came before us. So ultimately, this isn’t a story about technology. This is a story about humanity,鈥� she says.

And that鈥檚 something we should all be trying to embrace.

The post The Future is Here. Now It鈥檚 Up to Us to Grab It appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.