Artificial intelligence is gaining ground among Philippine businesses, with companies increasingly exploring how the technology can improve operations, automate tasks and create new opportunities. But as adoption grows, another question is becoming harder to ignore: Can businesses turn their AI investments into results they can actually measure?

Research commissioned by Boomi and conducted by Omdia shows that Philippine organizations are moving quickly. Of more than 1,100 senior technology and business decision-makers surveyed across five APAC markets, 73% of Philippine respondents said their organizations are already running AI initiatives, close to the regional average of 74%.

The Philippines also recorded the highest proportion of organizations with defined key performance indicators for AI success. Half of those surveyed said they already have KPIs in place, compared with 37% across the region.

The enthusiasm is expected to continue. Nine in 10 Philippine organizations believe AI-powered automation will significantly change their business processes within the next two to three years.

But measuring success and achieving it are two different things.

For David Irecki, chief technology officer, APJ at Boomi, the foundation supporting AI is just as important as the technology itself.

"There's a lot of excitement around AI in the Philippines right now, with many organizations clearly defining KPIs to measure success," said Irecki. "However, there is a need to reduce tool sprawl, improve governance, and connect data across the enterprise for those KPIs to translate into real business value."

Connecting the pieces

This is where Boomi comes in.

Described as a data activation company for AI, Boomi helps businesses connect information and applications across their operations. These may include customer relationship management platforms, enterprise resource planning systems, finance applications, supply chain technologies and other cloud or legacy systems.

For a retailer, for example, a single online purchase can trigger a chain of activities across several systems. Customer and order information needs to reach the appropriate business applications, inventory needs to be updated, billing needs to be processed and the product eventually needs to reach the customer.

Rather than requiring each system to operate separately, an integration platform can connect these processes and automate the movement of information between them.

That same infrastructure becomes increasingly important when AI is introduced into business workflows.

Irecki explained that an AI agent could potentially take on a more active role in a process. Instead of being limited to one delivery provider, for instance, an agent could communicate with multiple carriers, assess available options and determine which could provide the fastest service at the best price.

Boomi refers to this as "agentifying" workflows.

But AI agents cannot operate effectively on disconnected or unreliable information. They need access to the right data, through secure and governed systems.

The foundation behind AI

The Omdia findings show that Philippine organizations are aware of this challenge. Only half currently have an integration platform-led approach, but 93% intend to move toward a unified platform that is ready to support enterprise AI.

At the same time, 92% are actively exploring ways to reduce the number of technologies and tools they use, citing the need to better manage cost, complexity and operational risk.

For businesses, consolidation can be about more than reducing software expenses. A more connected technology environment can also make it easier to introduce new applications, automate processes and use information across different parts of the organization.

Boomi's low-code approach is designed to make integration more accessible, allowing organizations to configure connections themselves or work with Boomi and its partners.

The company is also exploring how AI-assisted development could make integration even more accessible. Instead of manually building every connection, developers could use conversational coding tools to describe what they want to accomplish and interact with Boomi through those tools.

For the Philippines, Irecki sees particular potential given the country's strong BPO sector, where technology that can accelerate development could help teams deliver more solutions for their customers.

Governance cannot be an afterthought

As AI becomes more deeply embedded in business operations, governance is becoming another major concern.

The Omdia research found that 97% of Philippine organizations expect AI initiatives to increase their focus on data quality and governance. However, only 57% currently have formal policies specifically addressing AI-related data governance.

Nearly nine in 10 also identified unmanaged "shadow integrations" as a challenge to data quality and confidence.

Data sovereignty is another consideration. Eighty-two percent of Philippine organizations expressed concerns about data residency and sovereignty requirements, although only 35% said these concerns are significantly influencing their current data integration or AI strategies.

Michael Barnes, chief analyst, Enterprise IT Asia at Omdia, said businesses understand the importance of responsible AI, but implementation remains the difficult part.

"Philippine organizations are not naive about the risks," said Barnes. "Most organizations recognize that governance is essential to scaling AI responsibly. However, the real challenge lies in moving from awareness to execution. Organizations that successfully operationalize AI governance are embedding clear policies, accountability, and oversight into everyday processes. And they're the ones most likely to realize measurable business value and stronger returns on their AI investments."

From experimentation to scale

For Boomi, the opportunity in the Philippines extends across industries because the underlying need for integration is not limited to a particular type of business.

Higher education institutions can use connected systems to improve processes such as student onboarding. Financial services companies can automate payment-related processes while maintaining governance and auditability. Pharmaceutical organizations can connect systems to monitor critical processes and identify issues that require attention.

These different applications point to a broader role for integration technology: helping businesses make existing systems work together while creating a foundation for future technologies.

Boomi is also looking at the governance challenges that come with increasingly autonomous AI agents. The company has announced its intention to acquire Lunar.dev, although the acquisition had not yet been completed at the time of the interview.

According to Irecki, the potential acquisition is partly driven by the need to control how AI agents access business systems and information.

"How do we govern AI within our organization? How do we secure access?" Irecki said, describing questions businesses are increasingly asking as AI agents become part of automated workflows.

He also pointed to another emerging concern: the cost of running AI. As companies use increasingly sophisticated models, businesses will have to consider which tasks require more powerful models and which can be handled by smaller, potentially lower-cost models.

This is where model routing could become important, allowing organizations to determine which model is appropriate for a particular task.

Making AI work for the business

The Philippines has already demonstrated a strong appetite for AI. The next stage will be determining how that appetite translates into sustainable business improvements.

For Irecki, success will come when organizations can move AI beyond isolated experiments and into everyday operations involving multiple systems, teams, data sources, security requirements and business processes.

"How do we work across multiple systems, multiple teams, data sources, security policies, and business processes? How do we do that in a reliable, well-governed way? That's what excites me about Boomi and how we're used in companies because we solve that challenge."

For Philippine businesses, the AI race may therefore be less about adopting the newest technology and more about preparing the systems underneath it.

With organizations already setting targets for AI success, the next measure may be whether they have the connected data, governance and infrastructure needed to turn those targets into meaningful business outcomes.