Most UK business leaders (85%) feel that their productivity efforts are being held back, citing economic headwinds, employee stress and difficulty implementing new productivity tools as the three core issues, according to research from Celonis.
As businesses look for new ways to improve productivity and drive growth, Celonis’ research, carried out with 500 UK business decision makers, found that this group believes that better support for AI implementation (39%) would be more beneficial for the UK’s economic growth than reducing red tape (36%) or cutting business tax rates (35%).
Respondents also said that AI (46%) is more than twice as effective at driving employee productivity than return-to-office mandates (19%). But while 93% feel they are getting at least some value from AI investments, 36% say they still struggle to extract the expected value.
For many businesses the benefits of AI can’t come soon enough, as employees are currently spending 154 hours per year manually troubleshooting processes that could be automated. Almost half (48%) of business leaders are already investing in AI-driven solutions to improve productivity and 39% say that these investments are having an impact. Despite these investments, 31% cite a disconnect between senior management and staff as hindering morale, and a lack of digital skills adding to this productivity conundrum is reported at 24% of companies.
“AI’s potential to accelerate business productivity is extremely attractive, especially at a time when UK companies face so many barriers to productivity and growth,” said Rupal Karia, country leader UK&I at Celonis. “Yet, there’s a gap between AI’s promise and its ability to deliver tangible results. Process intelligence closes this gap. It provides a unique class of data and business context that enables process improvement across systems, departments, and organisations. Process intelligence ensures AI has the knowledge to understand how the business runs and how to make it run better.”
