Research among Belgian executives shows that more than half of Belgian business leaders believe they have an advantage over the competition when implementing AI. The reality is much more nuanced.

54 percent of Belgian business leaders believe that implementing AI in their company will give them a competitive advantage. This emerges from a survey conducted by the consulting firm Sopra Steria among 203 Belgian managers of companies with more than 250 employees. For the survey, Sopra Steria used a broad definition of AI that includes both ChatGPT-like solutions and recommendation engines.

Lots of self-confidence

74 percent have already adopted some form of AI for analyzing customer data, 66 percent use AI for risk assessment and 64 percent for fraud detection. 24 percent of respondents have already implemented a generative AI solution or are in an advanced phase of their rollout.

Confidence in both the AI ​​and the ability of employees to deal with it is high. 84 percent believe in the capabilities of the workforce and 83 percent trust generative AI to handle business data. Some expected problems also arise among the Belgian respondents. For example, 59 percent say data quality is an important challenge.

overestimation of oneself

What is striking is that the majority of those surveyed believe that they are further along in introducing AI than their competitors. In practice, many companies work with AI. Those who have projects underway are not necessarily ahead of other organizations on the market. Sopra Steria sees a great deal of overconfidence among companies, which does not reflect how the rollout in Belgium is actually going.

The numbers show that organizations today have little choice: jumping on the AI ​​hype train is no longer optional. Belgian civil society is also experimenting with the possibilities of the new technology and benefits can be quickly achieved in various areas.