Singapore businesses are among the most confident in Asia Pacific about rolling out AI, but 75 per cent say off-the-shelf AI does not meet their industry’s needs, according to research released by Infor.

The findings come from the second edition of the Infor Enterprise AI Adoption Impact Index, which surveyed 2,111 business decision-makers across seven markets in August 2026. YouGov ran the poll for Infor, with 260 respondents in Singapore, 263 in Australia and 266 in Japan.

Singapore leads on AI deployment, with gaps

Singapore ranked second of the seven markets for full-scale AI deployment at 43 per cent, just ahead of Australia at 42 per cent. Japan sat at 27 per cent, below the global average. Singapore businesses also reported average efficiency gains of 36 per cent from AI, against 34 per cent globally and 29 per cent in Japan.

Confidence and data readiness showed the same split. About 92 per cent of Singapore businesses said they can manage AI rollouts without disrupting daily operations, compared with 53 per cent in Japan. And 87 per cent believe their data is mature enough to support reliable AI, against 74 per cent globally and 38 per cent in Japan.

Generic AI falls short on industry needs

Markets further along in adoption are feeling the limits of generic tools most. Some 75 per cent of Singapore businesses and 70 per cent of Australian ones said off-the-shelf AI does not adequately address their industry’s needs, compared with 48 per cent in Japan. Pooled across all seven markets, 73 per cent of manufacturing respondents said the same, along with 76 per cent in distribution and 67 per cent in retail.

Governance ownership remains thin

Only 4 per cent of Singapore businesses said nobody owns AI governance, risk or compliance, against 6 per cent in Australia and 21 per cent in Japan. Executive-level accountability is still rare even so. Just 13 per cent of Singapore businesses have it, and globally only 10 per cent have appointed a Chief AI Officer.

“APJ is moving at very different speeds on AI, but every market still has foundations to strengthen,” said Geoff Thomas, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Asia Pacific and Japan at Infor.

Thomas added that governance cannot be put off as AI takes on more responsibility. Even so, 64 per cent of APJ businesses plan to raise AI investment over the next 12 months, the highest of any region surveyed and above the 59 per cent global average.

What Infor is launching

Infor used the findings to introduce its Infor Industry AI architecture and the next version of Infor Velocity Suite, which adds personalised adaptive user experiences, governance models across a customer’s whole enterprise and more industry-specific AI agents. The architecture rests on four pillars:

• Precise Outcomes: industry AI agents built on industry process catalogues and domain language models. Infor says customers using this layer process shipments up to 60 per cent faster.
• Open and Connected: the platform connects to non-Infor applications and existing orchestration tools, with a semantic layer called Infor IQ and more than 350 out-of-the-box use cases.
• Easy to Use: an adaptive interface that pulls what a decision needs into one role-aware view. Infor cites time savings of up to 90 per cent in procurement, supply chain, manufacturing and sales workflows.
• Governed: human-approval workflows, agent permissions and audit trails across the orchestration layer. Infor says customers see up to a 90 per cent cut in auditing costs tied to access management.