Growing companies are feeling the AI pressure most sharply.

The ambition is there, and so is the board mandate. What is often missing is the large central IT function, the data engineering bench and the multi-year budget that big corporations lean on. The question these leaders ask is rarely whether to use AI. It is more often how to reach the same level of automation, insight and control with fewer people and less time.

IDC data shows how wide the gap still is. 77% of European CIOs are prioritizing the implementation and scaling of AI over the next 12 months, yet only 6% say their data and infrastructure are ready to advance, and just 28% are confident their systems can deliver the high-quality data that AI demands. 56% point to data fragmentation and poor data quality as the biggest constraint on scaling agentic AI. At the same time, 38% of organizations already run AI agents in production across more than one business area, and among mid-size companies the first agents are landing in IT and customer service, followed by supply chain and sales.

That is how the autonomous enterprise actually begins: with a clean process and data foundation that agents can act on, extended one function at a time. Inside business applications the shift is already visible: 80% of organizations running ERP now use AI assistants or agents, saving between 30 and 90 minutes per user per day.