When Miriam Oehme became human resources manager at Biotest two years ago, she quickly found herself in front of a mountain of paper on her work table. There was also an analogue telephone on her table. Both were unusual for the former Merck employee, who describes herself as a “techie”. She was used to generous digitalization structures from the pharmaceutical company. These were hardly present at Biotest. And yet today there are AI agents in her HR team who take work off of the HR staff. The path there may differ from the AI transformation of fully digitalized companies like Merck, but it shows: AI transformation can also succeed without significant digitalization.
A look at surveys shows that Biotest is by no means the only company that is tackling AI transformation despite challenges in digitalization. According to a representative survey by the Bitkom industry association of 640 companies in Germany with more than 20 employees, 41 percent of organizations are currently using AI in their everyday work. 48 percent are planning or discussing the use of AI. At the same time, 51 percent of companies say that they have problems mastering digitalization.
