Why Kazakhstani businesses are turning away from IT ideas and what they expect from artificial intelligence

Gulnur Dosbol, PR Manager at Bitrix24 Kazakhstan

In May of this year, as part of the Research Sprint hackathon, students of Narxoz University studied the readiness of Kazakhstani businesses to use no-code tools, based on a task from Bitrix24 Kazakhstan. Experts from BISAM Central Asia, one of the most experienced research agencies in the country, led the study. The survey involved 200 managers and executives from the non-IT sector in Almaty, Astana, and Shymkent. Additionally, the researchers refined their hypotheses through 10 in-depth interviews with directors and owners of companies in seven key sectors of the economy. Participants included representatives from the telecommunications, insurance, and HoReCa sectors.

The Wait Crisis and IT Dependency: Businesses Reliant on Developers

Innovative Kazakhstani businesses are facing a significant obstacle—high dependency on IT specialists and external contractors. The demand for automation is growing much faster than the capabilities of the traditional IT market. As a result, the classic approach to developing digital solutions has sometimes become a source of costs and missed opportunities for businesses. According to the study results, 54.4% of companies in Kazakhstan have lost at least one promising business idea due to excessively long development times. About 35% of respondents stated that they wait for the execution of simple IT requests for anywhere from one to four weeks, while another 12% reported being forced to wait up to three months.

Aside from time, traditional development requires significant financial investment. During in-depth interviews, company leaders shared negative examples from their experience. One leader mentioned spending 10 million tenge on creating a website with a personal account but being dissatisfied with the result. Another entrepreneur was forced to hire expensive external contractors for a simple integration that the in-house IT department could not handle. 

Thus, three main complaints of Kazakhstani businesses regarding IT contractors were identified:

1. High cost of services—a primary issue for 33.6% of leaders.

2. Long execution times—a significant barrier for 28.1% of companies.

3. Dependency on developers—24% of businesses are tired of relying on the executor when updating or improving the software.

No-Code as a Savior: Creating Software Without Programmers

The economic inefficiency of classic development has forced the market to seek alternative solutions. One such solution is no-code. This approach allows employees without programming skills to create work tools and automate processes by giving tasks to artificial intelligence in simple language.

The study showed that although this term is relatively new to the market, it has already become widely known among Kazakhstani businesses. 70.5% of respondents are familiar with the concept of no-code, and 24.5%, or one in four leaders, have tried creating digital tools using AI without the help of programmers. Thus, no-code is not a technology of the future but has become a tool for addressing the real needs of businesses in the current IT crisis.

Breaking Stereotypes: The Issue Is Not Knowledge, But Trust

The study revealed that Kazakhstani managers and entrepreneurs are open to technology. 96.5% of survey participants use artificial intelligence tools in their daily work. They actively utilize AI capabilities for writing texts, searching for information, and conducting initial analysis.

However, the main factor hindering the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence is not a lack of knowledge. Businesses know how to use new technologies and are ready to do so. But before entrusting important business processes to artificial intelligence, companies want to receive concrete guarantees of security.

The Factor of Maturity: Why Some Companies Seek Free AI While Others Are Ready to Pay

One of the important conclusions of the study is that the readiness to pay for artificial intelligence services is directly related to the company's level of digital maturity.

Interest in neural networks is not enough to make a decision to purchase. At this stage, the market is divided into two main groups: 

1. 47.6% of companies with a low level of digital maturity are not yet willing to take financial risks and are ready to use artificial intelligence only through free versions.

2. Companies with a high level of digital culture form the premium segment. 31.8% of them are ready to allocate between 30,000 and 70,000 tenge per month for AI tools. Moreover, the majority of such organizations are prepared to consider even higher budgets for complex ecosystem solutions.

This is important information for AI solution developers: offering the same approach to all clients is ineffective. If digitally immature companies need to be trained and adapted to technology first, mature businesses can be offered large-scale and paid platforms immediately.