While artificial intelligence (AI) is a top priority for corporate IT leaders, many businesses are not prepared to properly implement the transformative technology. That’s the key finding from Lenovo’s recent global survey of chief information officers.
“CIOs see the speed of implementation and also the lack of corporate policy as some of the big challenges,” said Ken Wong, President of Lenovo’s Solutions & Services Group, in an interview with Bloomberg. “Technology is one important pillar, but there are broader things that we need to consider in order to deploy AI in the organization and see the results.”
Wong outlined four pillars that organizations must address for successful AI adoption: security, people/skills, processes, and technology itself.
“Security is the number one issue,” he said. “We need to consider how we can deploy AI responsibly — is there any bias or hallucination that we need to take care of?”
Another major hurdle is justifying the investment required.
“Our CIOs need to build a business case and justify the investment,” Wong stated. “We have to help our customers discover which parts of their organization are ready for deploying AI and how we can calculate that return on investment.”
Despite the challenges, demand for AI remains extremely high across industries.
“96% of the CIOs we surveyed are committed to spending more on AI over the coming years,” said Wong. However, most do not expect overall IT budgets to increase significantly.
As the Lenovo survey highlights, while keen to embrace AI, companies are grappling with readiness across technical, operational and cultural dimensions. According to Wong: “The key thing is technology is one important pillar, but there are broader things that we need to consider in order to deploy AI in the organization and see the results.”
As GenAI’s first year shows, companies with strong leadership backing AI initiatives saw the fastest adoption. Those lagging often had CIOs too focused on core operations versus innovation. Lenovo aims to help bridge that gap through advisory services complementing its technology offerings.
