Why company culture is key to turning AI hype into reality

Companies worldwide, particularly in Asia, are moving beyond the initial excitement of AI, developing a deeper focus on integrating and operationalising AI technologies within core business functions. AI remains a top priority for companies globally, including Asia, with 73% of business and technology leaders reporting to have already invested in it, according to the Kyndryl Readiness Report.

AI adoption is evolving, with businesses in ASEAN moving away from broad, productivity-focused solutions and instead prioritising fewer but more impactful AI use cases. Kyndryl is helping customers operationalise AI through proven infrastructure and cloud-native architectures. For example:

• In hospitality: Frasers Hospitality worked with Kyndryl to enhance the processes through which operational expertise is documented and streamlined. A solution was jointly built to transform training videos and add interactive multimedia features and multilingual capabilities to scale across its global portfolio.
• In logistics: Kyndryl used AI to help Vietnam SuperPort automate x-ray image analysis and validate documents.
• In employment services: Quest is using AI to further personalise the user experience on its gig marketplace, improving the connection between businesses with open positions and skilled local talent, resulting in increased job matching and fulfilment rates.

While businesses may be at different points in their AI journeys, there is a key difference between businesses that are close to achieving their goals versus those whose progress has stalled – their company culture. Kyndryl’s AI Readiness Report found that only 41% of AI investments see a positive return, with a quarter of leaders facing difficulties integrating AI into their existing workflows. The allure of technological optimism has become a common pitfall for businesses, believing that simply deploying advanced tools will yield immediate transformative outcomes.

At its core, AI transformation is not a silo technological approach – it is a solution that also requires behavioural change, to ensure that solutions align with the needs, concerns, and expectations of those who interact with them. It is more than just deploying new applications; it is preparing people and creating the right culture and support to help employees embrace AI as an enabler rather than a disruptor.

In fact, Kyndryl’s People Readiness Report reveals culture as one of the critical fault lines in the AI transformation narrative. Businesses that encourage collaboration and curiosity are more likely to turn AI’s potential into tangible business value, especially when coupled with a strong data foundation.

Breaking silos, building synergy

While several factors can transform a business’ AI strategy – including diverse expertise, strong governance and a deep understanding of business challenges – a three-pronged approach to company culture is critical to enable business success. Collaboration and alignment can encourage co-innovation across all lines of business to streamline efforts, eliminating counterproductivity and ensuring that resources are fully optimised. A spirit of endless curiosity can help identify the best ways to use this developing technology at every stage of the adoption process to further maximise its value. By prioritising data at all levels of an organisation, businesses can fully realise the benefits of AI, uncovering strategic insights down to the operational level.

Consider a business in a highly regulated industry, such as financial services. As these organisations think about implementing generative AI (GenAI), they must first ensure all business leaders are aligned on the company’s goals and how GenAI will have an impact on overall data and AI architecture, the data strategy, an organisation’s IT estate and the business at large. It can also lead to a more positive return on investment due to the clarity around the investments and solutions needed to achieve the desired results.

Bridging culture with skills and data

Once we have the right cultural traits down, businesses must understand how solutions can be deployed and have the right skills and data foundations in place to do so at scale. This requires continuous investment – from a cost and time perspective – and the willingness to try different approaches. This includes implementing a data strategy built on modern architecture, a mature data platform and robust security, while breaking down silos and establishing clear governance policies. This approach cultivates data-literate employees and establishes a reliable data estate and operations that will feed one’s GenAI solutions, meaning insights can be trusted and used to drive business impact.

READ MORE: From IBM to The Kyndryl Way: Inside a successful cultural transformation

At Kyndryl, we guide businesses in implementing AI responsibly by first identifying a use case where GenAI can solve a business problem within the AI guardrails. Then, we evaluate and modernise their IT estate and data foundation to support this technology. After the solution is deployed, we consistently monitor its operations – and its results – to ensure it is responsibly supporting business goals.

Culture as catalysts

With any new technology comes risk, but GenAI use cases illustrate the technology’s value. GenAI, for example, can be used to improve customer experiences by moving beyond providing quick answers to frequently asked questions. Instead, using a GenAI-enabled chatbot can deliver higher value impact to businesses by leveraging the knowledge and SQL code it has access to, and executing queries it receives. The technology can also help businesses derive value from enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to inform business decisions and perform sentiment analysis to prioritise customer requests by level of urgency.

Businesses are recognising that the potential value outweighs the present risk – particularly when leadership fosters a culture of curiosity and data fluency to mitigate implementation challenges. While approaches are industry-dependent, they are striving to move away from proof-of-concepts and implementing solutions that reshape core business functions and data structures at all levels. The most advanced customers will ensure they can achieve strategic deployment with the right data foundation, data governance and cost control.

For these businesses, the path ahead is clear. Technology can help them capitalise on GenAI’s potential – if they are willing to harness their culture and build the right data foundation. And trusted partners can help them accelerate their journeys, ensuring they are able to move beyond the hype.

About the Author:

Andrew Lim is Managing Director for ASEAN and South Korea at Kyndryl.