If AI is the destination that most organisations want to get to, not everyone is ready for the journey yet.
In fact, when we surveyed over 1,000 IT decision makers to gauge their organisation’s state of AI readiness and adoption, we found that 39% have not yet started considering AI yet, citing lack of expertise, cost, and uncertain return-on-investment as the three main barriers.
Even though 51% of our respondents consider AI important to their organisation’s long-term strategic goals, many are still held back by uncertainty over how to realise that value.
We believe that AI will prove to be the revolutionary technology of our time. But we’re moving from what Gartner calls the ‘hype’ phase of AI to the ‘trough of disillusionment’, where many organisations are now grappling with the practical implications of realising AI’s promised potential.
And what we are learning is that many businesses aren’t yet in a position where they can fully leverage AI to increase efficiencies, reduce costs, and supercharge innovation.
This is why we commissioned the AI Readiness Report 2025, to understand how ready UK businesses are for AI, and identify the barriers standing between them and AI adoption. After all, our mission at ANS is to help UK businesses overcome those barriers and get AI ready.
But what do we mean when we say AI Readiness?
Defining AI Readiness
AI Readiness is the process of preparing your technology, people and processes so that you can fully leverage AI solutions and implement them successfully into your organisation.
From the technology side of things, this means setting the right foundations across Cloud, Data, Security and Digital (Business Applications and Low Code) to build and implement AI solutions on top of.
It also means putting the right Enablement plans in place, the training and adoption mechanisms that ensure people across your organisation are able and willing to use new AI tools.
If you get those things right, your organisation will be ready for AI.
To illustrate what we mean, let’s use an example.
The Journey to AI: Getting Ready for a Road Trip
Whenever you go on a journey, you need to prepare. And if we imagine the journey to AI as a planning a cross-country road trip, AI Readiness is made up of all the things that need to be in place before you can set off.
Your Cloud environment is your car
You need to be in a vehicle that has the right size engine, can go the right speed, has appropriate tyres, and a tank large enough to travel the distances required.
You can’t go down a motorway in a go kart, for example. Well, you can, technically, but it wouldn’t go well, and the risks would arguably outweigh everything else.
In the same way, your journey to AI is more easily possible when you’re in the Cloud. Only Cloud platforms offer powerful enough computing resources, storage solutions, and advanced tools at the level of scalability necessary for training and deploying AI models, without excessive overhead and capital outlay.
The Cloud is the vehicle that can get you to your destination.
Data is your fuel
Data powers the engine of AI. And a car with an empty tank isn’t going anywhere.
It’s deeper than that, though. Imagine if you didn’t know where any of your local petrol stations were. Or, if none of the pumps were labelled so you wouldn’t know if you were putting diesel into your petrol car.
In many ways, it’s the same with data. High-quality, diverse, well-labelled datasets are essential for training robust AI models. The more data available, the better AI can learn and make accurate predictions.
But if you can’t access your data, it’s of poor quality, or it’s in a format that you can’t do anything with, you’ll be unable to truly leverage AI’s power.
Security gets you to your destination safely
Locks on your car stop someone stealing it and making off with your valuables while you’re in the Services. Security can also be the seatbelt that protects in case of an accident. It can also be the runflat tyre that lets you drive to a safe location after a puncture.
But there’s more to security than that. Security can also cover the rules of the road, the laws and limits that mean you can’t ride a bicycle on a motorway, or drive at 70 miles-per-hour on a 20 mile-per-hour road or get behind the wheel of an HGV when you’re only qualified to ride a moped.
In the world of AI, this means not just securing your AI and data systems to protect them from threats and vulnerabilities. It’s also about making sure you have the governance in place that sets rules for how your AI and data systems can be used, by whom, and for what purpose.
Digital represents your dashboard instruments and advanced features
The instruments on the dashboard collect information from the car – speed, amount of petrol or charge remaining, tyre pressure, the engine’s RPM – and present them to you in a way that helps you make decisions when you’re driving.
With the right tools in place, you can even get access to new kinds of information that make tasks easier. Consider the sensors that warn when another object comes too close, or the rear-facing cameras that make reversing much easier.
You could also include automatic transmission in this category, as it automates the process of changing gears. Or, at the more advanced end of the spectrum, you have driverless technology, which allows people who don’t even know how to drive to ‘drive’ a car.
In the realm of AI, Digital solutions (which incorporates Business Applications like Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 and Power Platform) enable rapid development and deployment of AI solutions and democratise AI development by allowing people with minimal coding experience to create and integrate AI functionalities into their applications and business processes.
Business Applications that incorporate AI can also automate processes and enhance decision-making, which drives overall business agility and growth.
Enablement is your drivers’ license
To put it bluntly, you won’t get far in your road trip if you don’t know how to drive.
You need experience on the roads to feel comfortable behind the wheel. A car is a sophisticated, powerful piece of technology, and it makes sense that we expect people to spend many, many hours getting familiar with how to operate one.
It’s much the same with AI, but it’s an important part of the journey that often gets overlooked.
Having the technology in place to implement cutting edge AI solutions is great, but if the people in your organisation don’t know how to use those AI tools – or, worse yet, you haven’t convinced them that it’ll make their lives easier – then it’s doomed to fail.
This is why it’s crucial in any AI journey to consider the training and Enablement programmes that will ensure the AI solutions you’ve invested in will be adopted far and wide across your organisation.
ANS is the Satnav on your journey
Ultimately, you could have a top-of-the-line sports car filled to the brim with petrol and twenty years of experience on the roads. But none of it is any use if you don’t know how to get to where you’re going.
The famous saying goes that every journey starts with a single step.
What they don’t say is that not every journey starts from the same place. And not everyone knows in which direction that first step should be.
The path to AI isn’t linear. You can start it from many different points. And some will be closer to the destination than others.
But there is always a way to get there. By laying your technology foundations across Cloud, Security and Data, as well as putting Enablement plans in place to ensure widespread adoption, you can reach your AI destination.
If you’re not sure where to start or how to get there: don’t worry, you’re not alone. Many customers we speak to are facing some version of this challenge.
But ANS can help you get there.
Whether you’re starting in Cloud, Data, Security, or even Business Applications and Low Code, we can help you understand of how ready your organisation is for AI and plot your course to adoption.
Whichever stage you’re at, your AI journey starts here.
Download the ANS AI Readiness Report 2024 now and get access to our full findings, including the key barriers to AI adoption, how organisations are readying their workforces for AI, and the concerns many have towards use of AI.