No lack of goodwill and intentions, but companies in the Benelux are still failing to bring AI into practice. “POC fatigue” is the main culprit according to SAS.
On a summer June day, the Queen Elisabeth Hall in Antwerp is the stage for SAS’s orchestra. After the main act earlier this year in Orlando, the company is on its European tour. The symphonies have an unsurprising common thread. “Intelligent decisions form the basis of success for your business”, says opening speaker Bob Messier in his capacity as SVP Global Customer Advisory.
Mathias Coopmans, Head of Customer Advisory Benelux, takes over the baton. In a duet with Market Strategy Lead for AI Marinela Profi, Coopmans brings everyone who wasn’t in Orlando up to speed on what SAS has up its sleeve. Coopmans hopes his words don’t fall on deaf ears: “The Benelux is lagging a bit behind in AI adoption”.
POC Fatigue
In one of the many meeting rooms, we explore with Coopmans where exactly things go wrong. Phaedra Kortekaas, Managing Director in the Benelux region, has joined us. “There’s so much new technology that people try to keep up with. But at some point, you have to dare to make a decision. A board isn’t interested in what the latest version is and would rather see business results”.
Indecisiveness results in what Kortekaas describes as “POC fatigue”. “There’s a lot of intention to start proof of concepts, but the real large-scale rollout fails to materialize. AI slowly dies in pilot projects because enthusiasm within the organization decreases. A pilot project quickly stalls once it gets a bit more difficult, because the data quality is insufficient, for example. You need to dare to look under your hood first”.
“We don’t like to talk about an ‘average’ adoption rate, because there are outliers on both sides”, Coopmans chimes in. “In the public sector, for example, we see good things happening. But companies don’t always realize what gold they have in their hands”.
Short Lines
Belgium is traditionally a country of SMEs, and that doesn’t have to be a disadvantage for AI adoption, Coopmans believes. “The appetite to do more with data and AI is equally present among SME ‘s. With a standardized offering, we make AI accessible to them. The advantage that SME’ s have is that the lines are often shorter. A clear structure helps to achieve quick results”.
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“A second advantage for SMEs is that, unlike large companies, they rarely struggle with complex legacy systems. In large organizations, you sometimes get a complicated ‘spaghetti’ of unconnected systems,” Kortekaas adds.
“AI is not going to disappear from business operations”, Coopmans is convinced. “It was first implemented on a small scale at the level of personal productivity. The next step is to bring it to the company level”.
Saying and Doing
All major parties are shouting AI from the rooftops today, but SAS is convinced it has a unique story to tell. Coopmans explains: “Everyone says governance is important, but we actually do it too. Just as we make AI accessible and low-threshold, we do the same for governance by incorporating it into the design from the start, to bring literacy to the board level”.
Kortekaas emphasizes the importance of reliability, something SAS constantly hammers on during its meetings. “Implementing AI in the right way is in our DNA. Our Intelligence capabilities are, we believe, unique for an analytics platform. You then need to actually do something with those insights. SAS turns insights into action, without but also with human intervention when needed. Intelligence is a game-changer if you can scale this across the entire process. The market’s ambition could be a bit higher here”.
In this philosophy, SAS tries to keep everyone happy. Kortekaas: “Our platform can be deployed anywhere the customer prefers. SAS follows your data strategy and not the other way around. The SaaS principle is very nice, but especially for companies operating in a regulated context, like many of our customers, it’s not always the best solution”.
“Many companies today are looking for hybrid solutions. Sensitive data is preferably kept close to home. We want to give customers the choice to determine for themselves what they want to place in their own data centers and what in the public cloud. We apply this same principle for AI. We don’t concern ourselves with developing and training LLM ‘s, but let customers integrate the models they already use via API’ s”, says Coopmans.
Everyone says governance is important, but we actually do it too.
Mathias Coopmans, Head of Customer Advisory SAS Benelux
A Touch of Quantum
SAS fast-forwards time. The company is convinced that “quantum AI” won’t be long in coming. This domain is close to Kortekaas’s heart. She doesn’t have to think long about our question of whether and why companies in the Benelux should already be losing sleep over quantum computers.
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“Quantum technology is suitable for many contemporary use cases. ‘Tapping into’ quantum in the cloud is in an experimental phase. It’s still on a small scale now, but the combination of traditional and quantum computing can be very powerful. Then the sky is the limit“.
Along with optimism, there’s also realism from Kortekaas. “The ‘negative’ reason why quantum is getting attention is its impact on encryption. Banks, insurers, governments, and all organizations concerned will need to understand well what quantum encryption entails”. Coopmans agrees: “One day quantum computers will be here. Then you’d better be well prepared”.
Being ready for what is and what will be: that’s the message SAS wants to give everyone in the Queen Elisabeth Hall. “The technology is there. Now as an organization, you need to have the courage and ambition to put it into practice. Don’t do another experiment just because you’ve heard a new buzzword”, Kortekaas concludes.
This editorial contribution was created in collaboration with SAS.