SAP: Fast-Growth Firms Hold the Biggest AI Opportunity, but Few Use It
AI is now used across roughly 25% of business tasks, but only nine percent of organizations have fundamentally adapted their business around it, according to SAP's global research with Oxford Economics. In a feature article, SAP argues that medium-sized fast-growth companies are best placed to close that gap.
- SAP and Oxford Economics research: AI is used across about 25% of business tasks, but only nine percent of organizations have fundamentally adapted their business around it.
- SAP says the main obstacle is business readiness, not AI technology.
- SAP argues medium-sized fast-growth companies can deploy autonomous capabilities in weeks, not years.
- Freedom Consulting says SAP GROW Fast enables go-lives in six-week waves.
- SAP has launched a €100 million partner fund to speed adoption of AI assistants and agents.
Wide adoption, shallow impact
The feature, written by Santina Franchi, president of the SAP Corporate Segment, opens with a contrast: AI has become one of the fastest-adopted technologies in business history, yet AI value has not spread as widely. The research cited by SAP puts AI use at approximately 25% of business tasks. Only nine percent of organizations, however, have fundamentally adapted their business around it.
SAP reads that gap as a sign that most companies are not embedding AI into how the business actually operates. It presents its Autonomous Enterprise concept as the answer: moving AI beyond individual productivity gains to orchestrating end-to-end business processes across the enterprise.
According to SAP, the approach rests on data, processes and governance, in that order. The company points to poor data quality as one of the biggest obstacles to enterprise AI and says mission-critical processes cannot be "almost right." AI, it argues, needs the same controls, auditability and compliance that organizations already expect from their ERP systems.
Readiness, not technology, is the obstacle
On why AI initiatives stall, SAP says the Oxford Economics findings point to business readiness rather than AI technology. Many organizations have added AI to individual applications, while far fewer have connected it to the information, processes and governance needed for enterprise-wide value. SAP says this explains why so many pilots struggle to scale.
Javier Navarro, SAP global head at SEIDOR, said AI can only support intelligent business decisions when it is grounded in how the business operates, including who the customer is, which contract applies, what inventory is available, which approval policies are in place and which regulatory requirements must be met.
DK Sinha, CEO of Accenture Edge, said client conversations have shifted: customers are no longer asking how to deploy AI but are demanding ways to harness it rapidly and scale it while minimizing risk. He pointed to programs such as ADVANCE, which combine standardized delivery, industry expertise and AI-enabled accelerators.
Why mid-sized fast-growth companies have the edge
SAP says medium-sized fast-growth companies combine the agility to move faster than large enterprises with enough scale to generate meaningful value from AI. It lists several advantages:
- fewer systems to integrate
- shorter decision-making chains
- less technical debt
- typically more willingness to adopt modern, cloud-native platforms
As a result, SAP claims, these companies can deploy autonomous capabilities in weeks, not years, and see ROI far more quickly. Its Autonomous Enterprise strategy provides AI agents with a structured understanding of business entities, relationships and processes, giving them context to support real business execution.
SAP also argues that the hardest part is redesigning the operating model rather than implementing the technology. It says traditional transformation was consultant-driven, leading to high costs, long timelines and knowledge dependence. Its alternative rests on three principles: customer enablement-first, customer ownership, and AI-driven continuous learning.
Jiro Furuya, CEO of Freedom Consulting, said his firm combines AI guidance for day-to-day operations, tools such as SAP Joule for Consultants, and a centralized data foundation that learns from every project. With the SAP GROW Fast methodology, he said, the firm can deliver go-lives in six-week waves.
Partners and a €100 million fund
SAP stresses that no company becomes an Autonomous Enterprise alone. It says partners contribute industry expertise, business process knowledge and change management, helping customers identify high-value use cases, integrate SAP with the wider IT landscape and develop industry-specific AI agents.
To support this, SAP has launched a €100 million partner fund to accelerate customer adoption of AI assistants and agents. According to SAP, this lowers the barrier to adoption for fast-growing companies.
The message for mid-sized businesses is that SAP sees the competitive question shifting from whether to use AI to how deeply it is built into operations. The claims about speed and ROI come from SAP itself and are not independently demonstrated in the article.
