Qlik®, a global leader in data integration, data quality, analytics, and artificial intelligence, recently announced the launch of its 2025 AI Reality Tour, a global tour designed to help organisations transform AI strategy into measurable business outcomes.

A recent Qlik study found that 92% of South African organisations deemed AI as either “absolutely essential” or “very important” to their success over the next 12 months, making it clear that AI is becoming a cornerstone of corporate strategy in the region.

Local respondents reported a strong pipeline of AI initiatives, with the average business managing anywhere between one and 50 AI projects in the planning and scoping stages, and between 36% and 48% of projects already in development or testing phases. Furthermore, an encouraging average of 23 projects per organisation are already live and operational.

However, despite these positive advancements, the survey results highlight that businesses face notable challenges in scaling AI projects effectively, indicating that an average of 17 projects per company have been paused or cancelled. This is often due to challenges such as a lack of skills to support implementations post roll out [30%], insufficient resources to develop and work on the projects [25%], budget challenges [21%], and miscommunication around the project objectives [21%].

“AI isn’t a lab experiment anymore—it’s the baseline. What separates leaders now is execution,” said Mike Capone, CEO of Qlik. “That means embedding intelligence where decisions get made, and doing it with speed, trust, and scale. The AI Reality Tour shows what that looks like in practice—because strategy without action doesn’t move the needle.”

The 2025 AI Reality Tour will showcase how Qlik is uniquely enabling execution at scale through three key innovations:

• One platform, built for action: Qlik unifies data integration, analytics, and AI across a single cloud-native platform—so execution happens faster, with fewer handoffs, and no patchwork solutions.
• Open by design, efficient by default: Qlik Open Lakehouse delivers real-time ingestion, automated Iceberg optimisation, and cross-engine access—cutting infrastructure costs by up to 50% while boosting performance by up to 5x.
• AI that works where you work: From proactive discovery agents to embedded forecasting, writeback, and prep, Qlik’s embedded capabilities bring intelligence directly into your workflows—out of the box, and at scale.

The AI Reality Tour is built for decision-makers looking to move faster from strategy to execution. Delegates will gain practical insight into what it takes to scale AI in complex environments—through live demonstrations, working sessions with Qlik experts, and candid conversations about real deployments. Content is shaped around regional priorities, with a focus on solving for the conditions that make AI valuable—not just possible.

“South Africa is at a pivotal moment in its AI journey,” said Tejas Mehta, Senior Vice President for Qlik in the Middle East and Africa. “Businesses here clearly recognise the potential of AI, but many are still grappling with how to scale projects beyond pilots and proofs of concept. The AI Reality Tour is about bridging that gap—showing organisations what successful execution looks like and equipping them with the strategies and tools they need to move from experimentation to impact.”

The Johannesburg leg of 2025 AI Reality Tour series of events returns to South Africa on Tuesday 9 September this year, hosted at The Leonardo in Sandton. The one-day, high-impact event brings together Qlik experts, leading partners and forward-thinking customers to explore how to local organisations can leverage AI to ‘Do Data Differently’.