More than 6 out of 10 companies in Romania are worried about the risks brought by artificial intelligence (study)

Most companies in Romania believe that artificial intelligence and machine learning are the emerging technologies that will change the market and business strategies the most in the coming years, but which also bring risks with their use, according to a study sent on Wednesday by StartupCafe.ro.

Artificial intelligence, although considered to be one of the technologies with potentially disruptive to the business environmentthis generates a number of important concerns within companies, according to the Digital Transformation Study, commissioned by High-Tech Systems & Software (htss), a software development company.

71% of Romanian managers participating in the study are concerned that the adoption of artificial intelligence solutions could expose companies to security breaches and data protection compliance.

At the same time, almost 7 out of 10 managers (69%) are concerned with the impact artificial intelligence will have on the workforcewhile 67% believe that adopting AI solutions can create technical challenges related to integration and scalability.

Regarding the concerns of Romanian managers associated with the use of the cloud environment72% of them are afraid of loss of control over own datawhile 71% are concerned to a large and very large extent with possible security breachesthe reliability of the services and the downtimes that can lead to affecting the continuity of business processes.

In 2024, the main reason why Romanian companies have planned investments in digital transformation processes is sales growth (82%). Also in the top motivational factors there are also:

• increased efficiency of production processes (80%);
• increasing the quality of products/services (80%);
• the development of collaboration between different departments (80%).

On the other hand, Romanian managers believe that the main disadvantages of digital transformation processes are:

• initial and maintenance costs (47%);
• possible downtimes of digital systems (42%);
• employees’ reluctance to adopt new technologies (39%);
• loss of data or information security (39%).

Customer relationship management through digital platforms is the main area of ​​activity for which companies have already invested in digital transformation processes (40%), followed by inventory management and sales process (37%) and preparation and storage of documents in the cloud.

Regarding the most successful digital transformation initiatives made by companies, 84% of managers interviewed state that they are happy with the investment in document preparation and storage in the cloudwhile 83% of respondents declare that investments in the use of AI in predictive and market data analysisas well as those in development of market places and wholesale sales produced the expected effects.

The study on digital transformation was carried out by Reveal Marketing Research, commissioned by High-Tech Systems & Software. The study was carried out using both qualitative and quantitative methods, following more than 600 interviews of different types.

The sample, nationally representative, was composed of managers of medium and large companies with a turnover of more than 1 million euros, from industries such as Health and Pharma, Retail and Trade, Energy and Utilities, Manufacturing and Industry, Transport and Logistics.