If your organisation already runs business software in the cloud and analyses its own data, you are in the group where AI takes hold. In our analysis of Eurostat data, 43.6% of EU companies with both foundations used AI in 2025, against 5.3% of companies with neither. The task for 2027 is to convert what you already have: one process, built on records you already keep.
This post is for the IT manager, CIO or information manager at a Dutch or Belgian organisation of 250 to 5,000 people. Crux Digits builds AI systems on the cloud applications and data an organisation already has, next to its ICT partner or internal IT team.
Why does having cloud and data analytics make AI more likely to succeed?
Companies with business cloud and data analytics use AI about eight times as often as companies with neither: 43.6% against 5.3% in 2025.
The reason is practical. An AI system that answers a customer, matches an invoice or proposes a planning has to read the record it acts on. When that record sits in a cloud CRM, an ERP or a hosted database, there is an interface to read it through. When it sits in a spreadsheet on a shared drive, the first project is a data project.
The group that prepared moved fast. Among foundation-ready EU companies, AI use rose from 23.4% in 2023 to 43.6% in 2025. Among foundation-ready companies with 250 or more staff it rose from 43.6% to 67.4%. Either foundation on its own lifts the rate to 19.1%. The two together lift it more than twice as far.
The definitions matter. Business cloud, in Eurostat's terms, means paid finance or accounting software, ERP, CRM, security software, database hosting or a development platform in the cloud; e-mail, office software and file storage alone do not count. Data analytics means your own staff or an external provider analyse the organisation's data. The AI figures come from Eurostat table isoc_eb_ai, last updated on 15 June 2026.
Which part of your data foundation matters most for a first AI use case?
Cloud CRM and cloud database hosting matter most: across the 27 member states they explain 66% and 64% of the differences in AI use.
Computing power follows at 55%, ERP at 53% and finance or accounting software at 52%. Data analytics on its own explains 24%. Among companies with 250 or more staff, cloud CRM is again the strongest single predictor, at 62%.
Read that as a sequence, not as a ranking of software. AI lands first where customer and transaction records sit in a system that can be queried. A dashboard tells you what happened last month. An AI use case changes what happens to the next order, ticket or claim, and that requires reaching the record, not the report.
This is correlation across countries, and the study says so. It does not prove that buying a CRM produces AI. It does show where the organisations that use AI keep their data.
How far along are Dutch and Belgian organisations already?
Further than most of Europe: the Netherlands ranks second of 27 on data foundations at 43.5%, and Belgium fourth at 38.9%.
Among companies with 250 or more staff, 81.6% of Dutch companies are foundation-ready. Large Dutch companies lead the EU on database hosting in the cloud at 78.2% and rank third on cloud CRM at 65.1%. Of the Dutch companies that use AI, 71.4% have both foundations, the highest share in the EU.
Conversion is rising quickly. Among foundation-ready Dutch companies with 250 or more staff, AI use went from 48.7% in 2023 to 75.0% in 2025. Belgium converts even better: 82.8% of its foundation-ready large companies use AI, second in the EU after Finland, up from 57.8% in 2023. Belgium also leads the EU on cloud ERP among large companies, at 55.9%.
The opening is still large. 20.4% of Dutch companies with 250 or more staff have both foundations in place and no AI in use: one in five. In Belgium the figure is 14.5%. If your organisation is in that group, the hardest part of the work is behind you.
What should an IT manager do in the next twelve months?
Five moves, each tied to a finding: start at the queryable record, pick one process, set a baseline, agree the interface, name owners.
- Start where the records already sit in a system with an API. Finding: cloud CRM and database hosting explain about two thirds of the differences in AI use between countries. List the processes whose records live in your CRM, ERP or hosted database, and rank them by volume and by how often a person retypes or re-checks the same data.
- Pick one process that changes a record, not another assistant licence. Finding: 71.4% of Dutch AI users have both foundations, and only 4.3% have neither. Assistants run without a data foundation; AI that changes an order, a planning or a claim does not. Choose a process whose result shows up in your own systems: time to close a ticket, invoices matched without a person, time from request to quote.
- Use your analytics to set the baseline. Finding: data analytics alone explains only 24% of the differences, far less than cloud CRM. Reports do not produce AI, but they show where the volume and the errors sit. Write down the figure the use case must beat before anything is built, so the result can be checked rather than argued.
- Agree the integration route with your ICT partner before the build. Finding: Eurostat counts ERP or databases on your own servers as no cloud, so an organisation running SAP on-premise looks less ready in the statistics than it is. That foundation is valid. Settle in week one which interface the AI system reads and writes through, who supports it, and how it enters your change process.
- Name the owners. Finding: with equal foundations, companies with 250 or more staff use AI at 67.4% and companies with 10 to 49 staff at 39.3%, 1.7 times as often. Size buys people, budget and governance. Give the use case a business owner, an IT owner and an audit trail: which data it reads, what it proposes, who approves it.
What does 2027 look like if the trend holds?
If the 2023 to 2025 direction holds, fewer organisations stay ready without AI, and staying in that group becomes a choice.
We do not put a number on 2027; the study contains no projections. What two survey years show is direction. Among EU companies with 250 or more staff, the share that is foundation-ready without AI fell from 31.4% to 22.4%. The foundation-ready share grew in 25 of 27 countries. Among all EU companies with ten or more staff, the share with neither foundation fell from 46.3% to 38.8%.
For a Dutch or Belgian IT department that moves the question. In 2023 the question was whether your data was ready. With 81.6% of large Dutch companies foundation-ready in 2025, readiness no longer sets you apart from your peers. Conversion does: which processes run on AI, with evidence your auditor accepts.
That is a strong position to start from. The costly part, moving finance, ERP, CRM and databases into systems that can be queried, is the part most large Dutch and Belgian organisations have already paid for. A first AI use case builds on that investment instead of starting a new one.
Where does Crux Digits fit?
Crux Digits designs and builds the first AI use case on your existing CRM, ERP and data, next to your ICT partner.
We work alongside the ICT partner or internal IT team that already runs your environment. We are not an ICT partner: we do not host, run infrastructure or take over beheer. We design the use case with your process owner, build it against interfaces your team supports, document what it reads and proposes, and hand over code your organisation owns. Where the foundation is the gap, for example data that is not yet analysed or not reachable through an interface, we do that data work first.
The full 27-country league, the size classes and the limits of the data are in our study on data readiness for AI.
For the data work that makes a foundation usable for AI, see data analytics in the Netherlands.
Last updated: 28 October 2026.
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