ServiceNow: Korean Companies Are Outpacing Global Peers in AI Investment Speed...Execution Capabilities Will Determine Results
TECHWORLD ·
✦ AI Summary
The '2026 Enterprise AI Maturity Index' by ServiceNow and ThoughtLab is a study of 4,500 executives across 19 countries and 12 industry sectors, with Korea included for the first time this year.
AI investment by Korean companies rose 120% year over year, outpacing the Asia-Pacific average of 116% and the global average of 110%, but maturity was 52, with operational foundations such as AI-powered workflows and governance still weak.
ServiceNow said that expanding AI investment alone does not guarantee results, and that stronger data foundations, governance, infrastructure, and enterprise-wide integrated operations are needed.
The '2026 Enterprise AI Maturity Index' jointly released by ServiceNow and ThoughtLab is a study of 4,500 executives across 19 countries and 12 industry sectors. Through the study, ServiceNow concluded that Korean companies are active in AI investment and adoption. However, it said that strengthening the underlying foundation is necessary for such investments to translate into actual operational results.
Korea was included in the study for the first time this year. As a result, a company-level benchmark has been established that can gauge the extent to which domestic organizations are scaling AI adoption and operations.
ServiceNow said the timing of the survey results coincides with the full-scale acceleration of AI policy and investment in Korea. In January, the Framework Act on AI Advancement and Trust Building, among other things, took effect. The law sets out transparency obligations, human oversight requirements, and risk management duties for high-impact AI systems.
In the 2026 budget, the government allocated more than USD 12 billion to AI, deep tech, and digital infrastructure.
Meanwhile, according to ServiceNow's announcement, AI investment by domestic companies rose 120% year over year. That exceeded the Asia-Pacific average of 116% and the global average of 110%. ServiceNow also said that while Korea's top-scoring category was leadership, vision, and strategy at 57 out of 100, its lowest-scoring category was AI-powered workflows at 40 out of 100, leaving a 17-point gap.
ServiceNow said this 17-point gap suggests a disconnect between strategic intent and actual operational performance. It also said that many domestic organizations are focusing their AI use on automating individual tasks rather than organically connecting workflows across the enterprise.
ServiceNow said this pattern reflects a common challenge for companies worldwide. Most organizations are adopting AI, but relatively few have built the foundations needed to use it effectively, and because Korea is expanding AI investment quickly, the gap is even more pronounced, ServiceNow said.
Hyeon Sang-jun, ServiceNow vice president for the region and head of Korea, said that Korea has the will, capital, and a clearer regulatory environment to emerge as a leading AI economy in Asia. However, the study showed that investment alone does not determine results, and pointed to the need for infrastructure that supports investment, the establishment of the right data foundation, the embedding of governance from the early stages, and the expansion from department-level automation to enterprise-wide integrated operations as factors that drive results. He said these domestic companies will turn their AI investment commitments into measurable competitive advantages, and described the AI Basic Act as a signal not of regulatory burden but of a direction that AI should be built correctly from the start.
The survey found that Korea's 2026 AI maturity score was 52, the same as the Asia-Pacific average and above the global baseline of 51. It also found that Korean companies are expanding AI investment faster than global peers.
Average AI spending by Korean companies rose 120% from a year earlier. That means the growth rate of AI spending by Korean companies exceeded both the Asia-Pacific average of 116% and the global average of 110%. The share of AI in Korean organizations' IT budgets was also projected to reach 14.6% in 2026 and 19.1% in 2027, confirming the expansion trend.
For agentic AI, 52% of Korean organizations were already found to have adopted it, matching the Asia-Pacific average. However, Korean organizations' use of agentic AI is mostly centered on 'personal support.' Forty-two percent of Korean organizations are using agentic AI to support individual employees, while only 9% have moved into building autonomous, multi-step workflows.
ServiceNow said AI adoption and enterprise-wide connected operations are separate matters. It also explained that while many organizations are investing in agentic AI, the stage at which agentic AI capabilities are being translated into actual business outcomes remains early. ServiceNow said there is a gap in Korea between the level of agentic AI adoption and the level of organically connected enterprise-wide operations.
ServiceNow said that in Korea, where manufacturing, financial services, and telecommunications form the core pillars of corporate activity, that gap points to significant opportunities for productivity gains.
Seven out of 10 Korean executives cited insufficient data accuracy, accessibility, and governance as key challenges to AI adoption. To address this, governance infrastructure was presented as a necessary component, but the level of governance infrastructure was found to remain inadequate.
At the same time, only 19% of Korean organizations were found to have AI testing, auditing, and risk assessment processes in place. The share of domestic organizations that have shifted from fragmented legacy systems to integrated platforms was also measured at 16%.
Burdens related to regulation and trustworthiness were also identified. Sixty percent of executives cited regulatory and compliance complexity as a challenge, while 59% pointed to a lack of transparency and the possibility of misinformation. These factors were presented as contributing to the current AI execution gap.
However, AI expansion is expected to accelerate significantly over the next two years. The share of organizations integrating AI workflows across enterprise operations is projected to rise from 16% now to 40% within the next two years.
The share of organizations implementing autonomous, multi-step workflows using agentic AI is expected to nearly double from 9% to 17%. The share of organizations automating and optimizing AI-enabled workflows is also projected to rise from 26% to 44%.
ServiceNow stressed that corporate preparation must proceed in parallel for the outlook presented above to translate into actual results. In particular, it highlighted the need to strengthen the foundation in line with the pace of investment growth as a condition for making the outlook a reality, and identified the need to rapidly strengthen the data foundation of domestic companies and the governance foundation of domestic companies as core priorities.
Source: TECHWORLD · Lee Gwang-jae
Original: https://www.epnc.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=406486
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Source: TECHWORLD
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