The era of AI experimentation is over. Today’s competitive advantage comes from purpose-built AI integration that drives measurable business outcomes. As Vision 2030 accelerates national digital transformation and workforce development, enterprises in the Kingdom are moving past pilots and into production-scale AI deployments that are reshaping how work gets done. IBM’s watsonx Orchestrate is becoming a force multiplier, ensuring the Kingdom’s young, ambitious workforce is empowered to thrive in an AI-first economy.

IBM’s latest EMEA analysis, The Race for ROI, shows that 84.2 percent of senior leaders in Saudi Arabia report significant productivity gains from AI, a figure that outpaces the regional average by a wide margin. The impact is not limited to automation; over 50 percent of Saudi leaders say AI has freed employees to drive innovation and new ideas, compared with an EMEA average of 38.1 percent. In other words, AI is reallocating human talent toward growth.

Saudi organizations: from pilots to measurable productivity

The momentum is reinforced by a national economic outlook. The Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority projects that the value of generative AI in the Kingdom will exceed SR4 trillion ($1,066.5 billion) by 2032, underscoring AI’s role as a primary driver of future economic value. In such an environment, leadership is no longer defined by acquiring AI tools, but by operationalizing them.

One reason Saudi organizations are realizing these gains faster is the shift from AI experiments to production-scale AI agents. Rather than relying on people to push work through systems, solutions such as watsonx Orchestrate help create, deploy and manage AI assistants and agents to automate processes and workflows. Watsonx Orchestrate uses generative AI to handle repetitive, rule-based and multi-step workflows end-to-end, removing operational drag and allowing employees to focus on higher-value execution.

“watsonx Orchestrate represents the next step in how we empower organizations to unlock the full potential of their people,” said Fahad Alanazi, general manager of IBM Saudi Arabia. “By combining AI and automation, we are improving productivity, helping leaders and teams reimagine how work gets done, and driving innovation and growth across every industry.”

Unlike traditional automation tools, Orchestrate plugs into existing stacks (Salesforce, SAP, Slack, Workday and 99 percent of enterprise tools) using natural-language and governed AI assistants, which can be built with no code through Agent Builder, or deployed from a pre-built catalog (HR, procurement, finance, sales). The result: automation of real work, not just tasks.

This impact is already documented. IBM Institute for Business Value study highlights the urgency executives are placing on AI-driven automation. Findings show that Orchestrate deployments deliver:

• +35 percent productivity

• +20 percent employee retention

• Significant gains in training effectiveness

And it doesn’t stop at HR. Finance teams using Orchestrate report +24 percent forecast accuracy and faster close cycles. Procurement leaders see +41 percent efficiency and stronger compliance.

A broader shift: EMEA signals the same direction

IBM’s EMEA research finds that 66 percent of senior leaders across the region already report measurable productivity gains from AI, and 92 percent expect clear ROI from AI agents within two years. Large-scale deployments are reinforcing this confidence:

• IBM AskHR handled 11.5 million HR interactions across 170+ countries through a self-service Orchestrate assistant

• FloCareer lifted interviewer pipeline by 10–20 percent with 94 percent candidate satisfaction

• Avid Solutions reduced onboarding time by 25 percent and project errors by 10 percent, turnover by 5 percent

Competitiveness will be defined by those who operate AI

For Saudi Arabia, these examples aren’t just illustrative, they are directly relevant to the scale and speed of national transformation. The global market is shifting from AI exploration to AI return, and Saudi enterprises are ahead of that curve.

In the decade ahead, the winners will not be the organizations that merely adopt AI, but those that embed it into how work is done, turning AI from a strategy slide into a competitive advantage in practice.