While Indonesia is still in the early stages of AI adoption, 2024 will be a year in which businesses can look to harness AI to transform the enterprise, with enhanced productivity, efficiency and personalization at scale.

How businesses operationalize AI will be critical next year. To begin, businesses will first need to build the right data foundation to capitalize on the new opportunities that AI presents. The ability to elevate customer engagement to new levels will also become an increasingly critical differentiator, with rising expectations and competition. Businesses that fail to adapt will risk being left behind.

Amid this AI revolution, what should businesses in Indonesia expect, and how can they get ready to leverage the opportunities in this new era of work?

Amidst economic fluctuations, Indonesia has shown commendable resilience. It has secured its position as a prominent player in the ASEAN economy, and is forecasted for robust growth of over 5 percent in 2023.

Indonesia has made consistent strides in laying the groundwork for AI adoption, recording one of the biggest improvements in overall and government AI readiness since 2021. A pivotal driving force behind this is the launch of the Indonesian National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence (Stranas KA) to bring AI and innovation to the forefront of the nation’s economy. Advancements in AI are expected to contribute up to US$366 billion to Indonesia's gross domestic product by 2030.

This presents a golden opportunity for Indonesian businesses to leapfrog and elevate themselves to a global stage. To do this, businesses will need a strategic AI framework built on the right data foundations, along with access to trusted technology, AI training, and guardrails for responsible AI adoption. Working with a trusted digital advisor will help businesses effectively realize the potential of AI in the year ahead.

Creating an effective AI strategy is fundamentally dependent on a strong data foundation. After all, AI is only as good as the data that powers it. As generative AI evolves from a complex technology to an everyday tool, it has highlighted the need for companies to develop a robust data strategy to fully harness its benefits.

However, the majority of organizations in Indonesia have yet to fully exploit the untapped potential of their data. In the financial sector, financial institutions continue to grapple with data integrity and access issues, as most are still in the early stages of data maturity.

Unlocking the power of AI will require a focus on data harmonization, where businesses eliminate data silos to extract value from trusted data sources. Concurrently, democratizing data for personalized insights, and a strong focus on data privacy, should be key priorities for corporate leaders in Indonesia.

To begin, business and IT leaders should put in place strong data governance frameworks, well-defined policies for data collection, storage, and use, as well as constant monitoring and auditing of training data. Only then they will be able to effectively and responsibly leverage AI to open up new ways of connecting with customers amid rising expectations.

The competition for customer loyalty and engagement is fiercer than ever. To stand out in this new era, Indonesian businesses need to deliver personalized experiences across every touchpoint.

With the right data foundation, innovations across AI, data and customer relationship management (CRM) can help businesses gain a better understanding of their customers, and bring to life new services, revenue channels and pathways for customer engagement. This will help to build stronger customer relationships, loyalty and retention in the long run. 

As digital adoption accelerates, demand for industry-specific solutions is increasing. For example, in the financial services sector, mobile banking apps and digital payments are fast gaining traction amongst Indonesian consumers. Financial institutions are under greater pressure to develop new products and services that deepen customer engagement and loyalty. In this case, adopting banking-specific solutions will accelerate time to value to better understand customers, what financial products they have, and what more they might desire.

As businesses explore new and more efficient ways to engage customers, chatbots have also been on the rise in Indonesia. While traditionally built on natural language processing (NLP) technology, large language model (LLM) chatbots now offer opportunities to provide richer chat experiences for customers. As LLM development becomes a growing area of focus for Indonesia, what should businesses be mindful of when looking to adopt this technology?

While many LLMs can produce highly conversational chatbots, the question of accountability means a future where chatbots can independently run customer service functions is still some way away. Businesses need to be cautious of potential accountability and liability issues that may arise with leaving LLMs unsupervised, especially with persisting concerns such as data privacy in Indonesia.

Who is responsible for the advice that a chatbot makes to the customer? There remain considerable risks of a chatbot giving inappropriate responses that could result in serious liability issues for companies. Human supervision will still be needed as a check and balance to validate and correct any inaccurate results generated by AI.

As AI continues to transform Indonesia’s business landscape, success will favor companies that can adapt quickly and pivot to placing data, AI, CRM and trust at the core of their business strategy. Staying ahead of the AI revolution will require more than just adopting the latest technology. Instead, businesses will have to understand the intricacies of a holistic AI strategy that involves building a strong, trusted data foundation, deploying trusted tools and AI training, as well as incorporating guard rails for responsible AI adoption.

Opportunities abound, and it’s up to us to seize them in the coming year.

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The writer is senior vice president and general manager for ASEAN at Salesforce.