Australian firms lag in AI value despite rising spend

Roland Berger has found that 37% of Australian companies are investing in and deploying AI without showing meaningful value, the highest share among the developed Asia-Pacific markets in its survey.

The Australian results form part of a broader study of 211 C-suite and technology executives across seven Asia-Pacific economies, including 30 Australian business leaders. The findings point to a gap between adoption and measurable returns, even as spending plans rise.

Just 27% of Australian companies surveyed were successfully turning AI investment and deployment into measurable business value. At the same time, 33% expected to increase AI spending in the next year, while 43% planned to spend more than AUD $5 million, up from 33% this year.

The survey suggests the issue is not whether companies have embraced AI, but whether they have built the processes needed to generate returns. Australia has strong governance, meaningful investment and mature enterprise technology adoption, but those conditions do not in themselves ensure results.

Companies that generate value from AI differ from stalled users in how they move projects beyond pilots and measure outcomes. Among businesses classed as AI leaders, 88% bring more than half of their proof-of-concept projects into production, compared with 9% of stalled companies.

Measurement also separates the two groups. Three-quarters of AI leaders use continuous return on investment monitoring, compared with 36% of stalled companies.

"Our report shows that Australia is caught in somewhat of an AI paradox, holding the highest share of stalled companies in the region at 37%. So, to unlock the next frontier of growth, business leaders must move past treating AI as merely a shiny add-on, and really start completely redesigning core workflows around autonomy," said Nawaz Isaji, Partner, Roland Berger Australia.

The report draws a similar distinction in how organisations apply AI to their operations. It found that 91% of companies struggling to generate value mainly use AI to augment existing processes, while only 25% redesign processes around autonomy when they convert AI efforts into successful outcomes.

By contrast, 75% of AI leaders pursue deeper transformation centred on autonomy, versus 9% of those struggling to generate meaningful value. This suggests the strongest returns are linked less to adding AI to existing workflows than to reshaping those workflows around it.

Returns and delays

Australian companies are seeing financial returns from AI, with operational efficiency delivering the biggest gains. Even so, the path to breakeven remains uneven.

Only 20% consistently reach breakeven on time, while 60% report occasional delays. This indicates that many organisations are still grappling with implementation costs, integration work and the time needed to embed AI systems into day-to-day operations.

"Australia's challenge is no longer simply getting AI into production, but proving its value. Despite strong governance and substantial investment, many companies still measure AI activity rather than financial impact. Australian executives must introduce continuous ROI measurement to ensure that AI initiatives deliver measurable business outcomes," said Damien Dujacquier, Managing Partner, Roland Berger Southeast Asia and Australia.

Platform choices

The research also points to a market that has already made substantial choices about AI's technical foundations. Nearly three-quarters of Australian companies, or 73%, use platform-centric integration, while 7% rely on standalone tools.

At the cloud level, Microsoft Azure was the most widely used service among respondents, with 83% adoption. AWS followed at 70%, while Google Cloud stood at 20%.

Half of Australian companies use a multi-cloud approach, compared with one-third that rely on a single-vendor ecosystem. These arrangements can support scaling, but they also increase the importance of integration, data governance and architecture as more use cases move into production.

The study suggests investment is driven by more than experimentation. Seventy per cent of Australian respondents said a genuine, data-backed belief in AI's transformative potential was a highly influential or decisive reason for investment.

Physical AI

Use of physical AI remains limited. Only 7% of Australian companies surveyed said physical AI, including robotics and autonomous systems, was operating at some frontline sites such as manufacturing, logistics and maintenance.

That is the lowest level of physical AI adoption in the Asia-Pacific region covered by the study. Yet interest appears to be building, with 80% saying they had already budgeted for physical AI investments or expected to make one within three years.

Those planned investments are expected to amount to about 40% of what companies spend on digital AI. The contrast between low current adoption and significant planned spending underlines how early the market remains in taking AI beyond software-based business applications.

The Australian findings are based on responses from 30 business leaders as part of the broader seven-market survey. They show that while 70% of surveyed Australian executives believe AI is transformative, 37% of companies are still investing in it without demonstrating meaningful value.