CANCOM, in collaboration with ServiceNow, has published the study, AI zwischen Vision und Umsetzung – Wie der Mittelstand den Schritt von Pilotprojekten zur breiten Umsetzung schafft. The survey, conducted by the analyst firm, techconsult, shows that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a strategic priority for German mid-sized companies and is already being used productively. At the same time, there are significant challenges regarding company-wide integration, governance and the secure scaling of AI applications.
For the study, techconsult surveyed IT and business decision-makers from mid-sized companies with 500 to fewer than 2,000 employees in Germany on behalf of CANCOM and ServiceNow in early 2026. The key finding: 76% of companies are already using AI productively, but only 26% have fully integrated it into their core processes. Many companies thus remain at the stage of individual pilot projects or isolated use cases.
According to the study, the correlation between strategic anchoring and actual maturity level is particularly clear: Companies with a clear ‘AI-first’ approach have fully operationalised AI significantly more often than companies that implement AI only at the departmental level. At the same time, 49% of the surveyed companies continue to pursue isolated departmental strategies, which can lead to data silos, parallel structures and security risks.
“The study clearly shows that AI in the SME sector has moved beyond the experimental phase. The crucial next step is now its controlled and scalable integration into business-critical and value-adding processes,” said Simon Russin, Vice President of Enterprise Applications at CANCOM.
