UK Businesses Embrace AI: Increased Investment Plans Amid Skills Shortage

How business leaders can upskill their workforce for the age of AI

While many organizations are still trying to figure out how to get the best out of AI, ServiceNow's customers are already putting AI to work and seeing incredible results, all in the space of a few weeks or months. We're in a moment in time where businesses are struggling with significant complexity. The Now Platform was built to simplify the way people work with technology, as organizations look to create better employee and customer experiences. Harnessing the power of AI offers a solution to many of the challenges organizations are currently facing, unlocking productivity, reducing costs and providing enhanced experiences. It's always a real pleasure to get back to the UK - and this is definitively an exciting moment in time, where we are seeing a rapid adoption of our AI platform across a variety of industries, from telecom, media, and technology to financial services, the public sector, and more. At today's World Forum, I'll have the pleasure to be joined by industry leaders from Aston Martin Aramco Formula One, Asda, Vodafone and more, to share how organizations of all sizes can harness the power of AI to achieve business transformation and get ahead of the game. What I've been hearing in the conversations I have with customers, is that AI adoption in the UK is accelerating- businesses are definitively past the hype stage of AI and have moved into that stage where they are seeing positive business outcomes from their AI investment. As a matter of fact, recent global research from ServiceNow, in collaboration with Oxford Economics, has found while in the UK, AI-powered business transformation is in its early days, British businesses are among Europe's leaders when it comes to AI optimism and maturity. Most UK organizations are still in the early stages of this journey. However, there is a clear sense of urgency when it comes to investing in AI, with 85% of organizations in UK saying that they plan to increase their investments in the coming year, according to ServiceNow's Enterprise AI Maturity Index. The research, which includes responses from 297 executives in various industries across the UK, found a strong appetite to accelerate the business benefits of AI. Respondents are particularly hopeful that AI can deliver increased efficiency and productivity (86%) along with improved customer experience (85%) and revenue growth (79%). For businesses that have yet to engage with AI, there is still time to implement an effective strategy. In fact, across UK, most organizations are still at the 'experimenting' stage of AI, the research found. Many are yet to embark on the journey of finding the right mix of skills and talent to power their AI approach, and the reality is that lack of AI skills and talents remains a challenge. Throughout UK, less than a third of organizations (27%) strongly agree that they currently have the right mixture of talent and skills to drive their AI strategy. More than half (57%) are still working out what skills are needed. At this relatively early stage, 38% believe they have made significant progress towards creating specialist teams for important AI issues such as policy drafting and responsible AI usage. But with each passing month, the urgency of finding the right AI skills and talent grows. Without the right human talent to guide AI deployments, attempts to integrate AI into work processes are all too likely to be a wasted effort. It's key for company leadership to act now to build an AI-literate workforce. To do so requires a dual strategy, including external specialist hires to make an AI project a success, and internal training to ensure that business users are equipped with the skills needed to effectively integrate AI into operations. Building AI skills is dependent on having a strong culture of innovation within the company - something that tends to flourish when employees feel free to experiment. In ServiceNow's research, 58% of organizations in UK said that they were enabling autonomous problem solving in teams to build trust. In terms of hiring, AI configurators are the most in-demand, with 54% of organizations planning to hire for such job roles, followed closely by experience developers (43%), data scientists (48%) and machine learning operators (40%). With a high demand for certain roles, and not enough trained people to fulfil the positions, there is a significant opportunity for internal upskilling. Across UK, businesses are focusing on upskilling or reskilling initiatives to develop the necessary abilities to stay up to date and successfully adopt AI. In fact, 42% of businesses plan to upskill employees significantly to create a new cohort of AI configurators, while 34% are doing this for experience developers and 36% are focussing on data scientists. For organizations looking to reap the benefits of AI, prioritizing - and investing in - skills development is essential to integrating AI smoothly into an organization. A two-pronged approach will deliver results: external hiring combined with an integrated, measurable approach to upskilling existing employees, including measures such as training courses to help build the right culture around AI. Proactively engaging with this skills challenge will foster a workforce capable of integrating AI and experiencing its rewards, as well as a workforce prepared to navigate future challenges and drive innovation and growth. As UK becomes a more mature region in terms of AI adoption, those that were at the vanguard will shape the business landscape. Those that hesitate for too long risk quickly getting left behind.

UK businesses want to spend more on AI, as lack of skills remains an issue

New research from ServiceNow has revealed that a large majority (85%) of UK businesses plan to spend more on artificial intelligence despite initial concerns about how ready their business is. Based on responses from more than 2,000 executives from the EMEA region, the company's Enterprise AI Maturity Index found that 86% of British companies are optimistic about AI's positive impact on efficiency and productivity - substantially more than the EMEA average of 76%. That being said, the report also reveals that many companies are finding themselves stuck in the early stages of adoption where they continue to battle with concerns about the technology. Around one in five (18%) UK companies were deemed 'pacesetters' in AI adoption, meaning that they had scored more than 50 out of 100 on an AI maturity test based on factors like strategy, leadership and integration. This puts the UK behind only the Middle East and Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) and aligns with the country's ambition to become a global AI hub and leader. The reason that companies are excited to progress their AI strategies becomes apparent - four in five (79%) believe that the technology will help them grow their revenue. AI is also particularly attractive to customer-facing businesses, with even more respondents (85%) anticipating that it could improve their customer experiences. However, because many nations are still in the early stages of adopting AI, key challenges continue to influence leaders' decisions. More than half (57%) of UK businesses are still determining which AI skills they need, and 37% believe they don't currently have the right talent mix. One-third (34%) of executives also expressed concerns about potential errors and inaccuracies in AI-generated content. ServiceNow Group VP and GM for the UK & Ireland, Damian Stirrett, commented: "The race to put AI to work is still in its early stages. Yet, it's clear that some organisations have already gained a head start in adopting and integrating it." Looking ahead, ServiceNow says that companies can prepare for AI deployment by hiring new talent and upskilling existing workforces.