Organisations must get on board quickly to tap into this potential, stay ahead of disruption and remain competitive in their industries. As our 28th UK CEO Survey reveals, 61% of business leaders plan to invest in technologies such as AI, GenAI, cloud and data analytics to drive transformation. But to deliver real impact, some organisations may need to fundamentally change how they operate.
Think back just 12 months. GenAI felt revolutionary, rapidly summarising documents, generating efficiencies and making recommendations. Today, with advanced autonomous agentic workflows, multimodal processing and more, what we’re able to do now makes earlier uses seem almost rudimentary.
As GenAI continues to evolve, it’s no longer just enhancing existing business models, but completely disrupting them. By lowering entry costs and enabling new platform players, it’s also reshaping industries. And this disruption presents an opportunity to rethink strategies, embrace innovation and find new routes to growth.
I’ve been in the technology sphere for more than 25 years, and I can’t remember seeing a technology so effective in augmenting human expertise to tackle previously unsolvable challenges in a logical, sequential way.
AI is a significant focus in the Gartner® Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2025. On agentic AI, for example, it notes that the technology “will enable organisations to transform the nature and efficiency of work, process and decision-making.”
GenAI’s application is already widespread. For some time now, AI-driven chatbots have been used in customer support for case handling and shopping assistance to improve customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. More recently, in specialised industries such as pharmaceuticals, the technology is accelerating drug development processes and improving the efficiency - and speed - of research.
In the past, being second or third to market still left room for success. GenAI changes that. Private equity and venture capital firms are now actively seeking platform players to disrupt traditional sectors. Organisations are increasingly going to need to look beyond immediate competitors and anticipate future changes to defend against a new type of challenger.
We’re already working with organisations in various industries to transform client onboarding experiences, using multimodal models and agents to reduce friction points and simplify interactions. While many continue to focus on cost, ease of use and user-friendliness are becoming increasingly critical and challenging the notion of unwavering customer loyalty.
This dynamic between incumbents and new entrants is set to become a fascinating aspect of the AI evolution. While established companies have the market power, expertise, and resources, they also face a daunting task of re-engineering their complex organisations to fully reap the benefits. New entrants tend to be more agile. They’re often able to embrace new AI solutions and use cases to disrupt traditional markets without the burden of legacy systems.
There are similarities with how organisations reacted to the appearance of cloud technologies. Pioneers saw a significant first-mover advantage, with some of the biggest software companies in the world today built off the back of that strategic decision. Conversely, many incumbents were slower to react. While some of them managed to pivot and succeed, others fell by the wayside. This time round, incumbents will need to think through this dilemma - how much do they need to disrupt themselves before they’re disrupted by the insurgents?
Source: Gartner, Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2025, Gene Alvarez, 21 October 2024
Many are taking a wait-and-see approach. But given the speed of development, organisations need to be more hands-on with GenAI, experimenting with each new iteration and understanding where it can best be used. This requires being 'fit for the future' - recognising that an interconnected ecosystem of activities (experimentation, training, adoption, strategic perspective, corporate agility, and more) is crucial for maximising the benefits of any rapidly evolving core technology.
Some of the clients we’ve worked with most closely are not measuring return on investment solely in financial terms. They place increasing value on the learnings and insights gained from using the technology in real-world situations. This shift in perspective underscores the importance of understanding AI’s broader impact on business strategy. It also comes at a time when 47% of CIOs told the 2024 Gartner AI Survey that AI is struggling to meet their ROI expectations, suggesting that historical ways of measuring ROI may no longer be fit for purpose. There’s increasingly a need for organisations to evaluate both hard and soft metrics, ranging from the traditional such as cost savings, revenue growth and productivity gains, to things such as employee satisfaction and retention, brand enhancement, innovation rate, risk mitigation, and more.
These leading companies don’t see AI as just an addition to their technology stack but an opportunity to remain competitive, or even get ahead of competitors. Once they adopt that mindset, the trepidation of knowing where to start or where to go subsides.
Returning to agentic AI as an example - it may feel unfamiliar when first introduced to an organisation. But by bringing in the technology at an early stage, individuals have more runway to familiarise themselves with how it works, and understand the opportunities and limitations. It will also give risk teams a better chance of successfully transforming the necessary AI governance procedures and guardrails to ensure trust in its use and applications.
Successful integration and deployment of AI hinges on finding the right partners and developing skill sets. Organisations may need to navigate a complex ecosystem of vendors and models, selecting those that align with strategic goals. Building internal capabilities and fostering partnerships with AI experts are essential steps in this journey. For some, the relevant skills may already exist in-house. Others may need to upskill individuals across the organisation or partner with third parties that can bring that expertise into the business.
Source: Gartner, Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2025, Gene Alvarez, 21 October 2024
At PwC, we’ve accelerated our own GenAI journey to equip more than 15,000 of our UK staff with AI skills and tools. By treating ourselves as ‘client zero’, we not only gained significant insight into the potential of this technology, but fundamentally transformed how we operate in some areas of the business.
In our work with clients, we’re using GenAI to complement the expertise of our people - analysing, summarising and contextualising vast amounts of data, such as during fraud detection and internal audits. This has significantly enhanced productivity and the value we provide. We’re able to process extensive datasets quickly and accurately to offer deeper insights and more effective solutions, transforming tasks such as procurement and sales supply chain management. In strategy and advisory work, we can augment decision-making with proprietary data, layering AI on top to make more logical decisions, ensure greater governance and build trust.
The benefits of AI have long been clear. But as we head into a new era where GenAI and more sophisticated solutions become readily available, organisations must see AI as a significant opportunity to remain competitive. For many, successful integration and deployment may require a change of approach. That might be finding the right partners, developing the necessary skills and embracing a culture of experimentation. Only then will organisations gain the valuable insights they need to drive future innovation and new sources of growth, and realise the potential it offers.
Source: Gartner, Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2025, Gene Alvarez, 21 October 2024
Gartner, Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2025, By Gene Alvarez, Tom Coshow, Jasleen Kaur Sindhu, Dan Ayoub, Mark Horvath, Nick Jones, Soyeb Barot, Frank Buytendijk, Marty Resnick, Bill Ray, Sylvain Fabre, Moutusi Sau, Bart Willemsen, 21 October 2024
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
Investing in Artificial Intelligence, above any other emerging tech, is being prioritised by our clients. Since the hype around GenerativeAI (GenAI) took off in earnest around 2022, clients have sought guidance around how to run transformative GenAI programmes.
Research by PwC and Strategy& takes a value-led approach to identifying GenAI opportunities and assessing the potential level of disruption and change in a number of industries.
For a small team trusted with a critical part of a bank's business, experimenting with emerging technology that could change everything - but which carries risks of failure - may sound bold. Yet this was the response to the hype around generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) from Ahmed Uppal, head of internal audit at the UK arm of MUTB.
With many organisations looking for a trusted partner to help tackle the challenges and opportunities afforded by GenAI, we’re delighted to be the GenAI partner sponsor of the FT Live events series. GenAI is creating new routes to value, driving efficiency, productivity and net new opportunities for growth. But what does that look like for your industry? And how do you capture that value?
