Around the globe, business leaders are exploring AI’s potential to help them operate more efficiently and drive better business outcomes. But not all businesses are on a fast path to achieving impactful AI results.
According to 2025 IBM research, for example, 77% of executives say they need to adopt gen AI quickly to keep up with competitors — but only 25% strongly agree that their organisation’s IT infrastructure can support scaling AI across the enterprise.
AI progress in Australia is advancing, but still limited. In the 2024 World Digital Competitiveness Ranking by the International Institute for Management Development, which measures countries on their digital knowledge, technology, and future readiness, Australia placed 15th of 67 countries — up just one slot from 16th in 2023.
One of the challenges holding back Australian businesses is a lack of the functional capability and confidence required to break out of the experimentation phases of AI projects.
“When an organisation is working with any unknown technology, the natural position will be to isolate it and put it in a sandbox, because of its perceived riskiness,” says John Hanna, Neudesic Australia. “This is not solely a reflection of technology, but one of organisational capability. [It takes both] organisational capability and technical talent to work with AI technologies effectively.”
Developing the functional capability to manage AI projects, and operationalise them once completed, is an especially tough challenge for Australia’s mid market organisations — which are competing against larger companies, across global markets, for small pools of skilled AI talent.
Working with a trusted integrator, with deep AI experience and credentials, can help mid market organisations fill the capability gaps that can keep them from moving beyond the sandbox to leveraging AI for impact. The right integrator partner will ensure the following efforts are central to Australian mid market organisations’ AI journeys, helping drive up their AI confidence and accelerate their success.
Define the outcomes AI will deliver
Organisations need to determine their AI objectives, and align them to their business priorities, before taking other steps. Having clear AI objectives and use cases, and identifying metrics for assessing improvements in the areas where AI is ultimately applied, makes securing buy-in and approval easier.
Common areas where businesses aim to harness AI for impact include increasing productivity, improving quality of work, or pursuing wider business value initiatives — such as improving customer service or bringing new products to market faster. An integrator partner that offers data and AI strategy services, such as longtime Microsoft partner Neudesic, can help Australian mid market organisations pinpoint the applications in which AI can drive meaningful, measurable benefits.
Build a data foundation underpinned by expertise
Working with AI introduces new challenges and constraints to the ways organisations manage their data, and maintain the quality and security of that data.
Organisations need to have clear policies on the classification of data that can be used for AI based projects, for example, as well as policies on the usage of external data (that may have copyright or licensing requirements). Organisations also need clarity on who is responsible for their datasets — especially those created for the sole purpose of AI usage — among many other security, storage, and compliance considerations.
With AI skill sets in Australia still highly limited, an integrator partner with experience building data foundations for leading multinational firms can be invaluable to mid market organisations.
“Having a trusted partner can help businesses avoid common [data and technology] pitfalls or mistakes, resulting in less investment remorse and creating business confidence in the technology at a faster pace than would otherwise be possible,” says Hanna.
Empower data-driven decision making
No matter the scale or size of their businesses, all organisations’ AI needs to be enterprise-grade in order to be capable of scaling over time, and providing the insights necessary to help organisations navigate an uncertain future.
Applying tried and tested technology solutions to targeted problem and opportunity areas is the fastest path to both driving impactful outcomes, and cultivating valuable insights to support data-informed decisions and strategies.
“Ultimately the breadth of data businesses need to deal with is vast, disparate and unstructured, often pushing existing systems, processes and teams that rely on analysing known patterns, beyond their capabilities,” says Hanna. “Adoption of AI provides a solution to analyse this information at scale and speed.”
Advance AI with confidence and capability
Having the right people, approach, and technology behind their AI initiatives helps organisations move projects forward with confidence. Making progress on AI as an organisational priority — rather than staying in the experimentation phase — takes a level of functional capability that’s challenging for Australian companies to achieve on their own.
Neudesic, an IBM Company and award-winning Microsoft pure-play partner, brings enterprise-grade IP and world-class experience and partnerships to the Australian market to help companies realise impact from their AI investments.
To find out more about Neudesic, go to https://www.neudesic.com/.
