Disconnected artificial intelligence applications are imposing significant productivity taxes on enterprises across Hong Kong and Taiwan, according to new research from Workday.
The report, titled "The Copy/Paste Economy: Why Task-Oriented AI Is Failing the Enterprise", reveals that whilst workers remain enthusiastic about technology, isolated applications force staff into managing manual handoffs between siloed tools rather than unlocking holistic operational efficiency.
The illusion of productivity in the copy/paste economy
The study, surveying 200 professionals across HR, finance, IT, and operations in Hong Kong and Taiwan, challenges common assumptions regarding worker disengagement or resistance.
In total, 97% of respondents view their day-to-day work positively, 90% express strong alignment with organisational goals, and 79% report making meaningful daily progress. Furthermore, 90% believe AI improves their daily work experience, and 79% note it reduces task completion time.
However, efficiency gains at the individual task level are failing to convert into overall time savings. Around eight in ten professionals spend substantial time navigating work between disparate platforms, with approximately 25% losing seven or more hours weekly to data reconciliation and manual transfers.
As Workday principal strategist Julie Colwell highlights in her analysis on the Workday Blog, employees are increasingly trapped acting as manual glue between disconnected applications, performing low-value coordination across core functions like payroll, hiring, and financial closes.
Disconnection hampers Hong Kong and Taiwan enterprises
The research reveals that the friction caused by standalone tools affects regional organisations more acutely than global benchmarks:
- Core integration lags: Only 25% of Hong Kong organisations and 12% of Taiwanese businesses have embedded AI directly into core workflows, trailing the global average of 27%.
- Operational delays and friction: Four in five regional workers report delayed decisions due to missing data, whilst 79% frequently dispute which figures are accurate.
- Draining rework: Nearly three-quarters (74%) redo tasks due to underlying system or data discrepancies, compared to 64% globally.
- Erosion of trust: Only 69% believe their organisation maintains a single source of truth, versus 78% worldwide.
Embedding intelligence into core business workflows
To eliminate this manual burden, business leaders must transition from bolt-on features to cohesive, embedded architectures.
Daniel Cham, general manager for Workday Greater China, stated: "Organisations in Hong Kong and Taiwan are embracing AI, but many are still layering it onto fragmented systems and workflows."
"While employees are already seeing AI help them work more efficiently on individual tasks, these gains can be lost when they have to move between disconnected tools and systems." Daniel Cham
"Organisations need to move beyond surface-level AI adoption and integrate AI into the core systems and workflows where their people, data and work come together," concludes Cham.
- editor's note: The ASEAN version of the same study can be found here.
