Lenovo sees AI PCs accelerating MSME transformation in Malaysia
For Jackie Wong, Senior Sales Director at Lenovo Malaysia, when it comes investing in AI PCs, the starting point should not be which AI PC has the most features, but what business outcome the organization wants to achieve.
Findings from Lenovo’s CIO Playbook 2026 revealed that 98% of organizations in Southeast Asia plan to increase their AI investments. While these statistics are positive, the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and Micro SMEs (MSMEs) are facing some challenges from having the skills as well as the funding needed to support their AI journey.
According to Jackie Wong, Senior Sales Director at Lenovo Malaysia, the country has built a strong foundation for its digital economy and the priority now is to translate digital adoption into measurable business value.
While findings from Khazanah Research Institute have revealed that many MSMEs have successfully digitized customer-facing functions such as sales, marketing and payments, the report also stated that progress often stalls at this stage, with fewer businesses integrating digital technologies across their core operations to enhance productivity, strengthen decision-making and build long-term competitiveness.
“From our experience working with Malaysian businesses, the organizations seeing the greatest value from AI are those that start with practical business challenges rather than the technology itself. Instead of treating AI as a standalone initiative, they embed it into everyday workflows, such as automating routine administrative tasks, improving collaboration, analyzing business data, or helping employees work more efficiently. Starting with achievable use cases allows businesses to build confidence while laying the right foundation for broader AI adoption,” Wong said.
Wong believes for Malaysian MSMEs, AI should be viewed as the next step in their digital maturity journey, helping them become more competitive in an increasingly digital economy.
Growth in Malaysia
With AI projected to contribute around RM500 billion to Malaysia’s GDP by 2030, underscoring the important role the technology is expected to play in the country’s next phase of growth. Against this backdrop, Lenovo is seeing Malaysian organizations move from AI experimentation towards execution, albeit at different stages.
While many MSMEs are focused on building stronger digital foundations, Wong highlighted that midmarket and enterprise organizations are increasingly looking at how to operationalize AI across multiple functions, improve decision-making and deliver measurable business outcomes at scale.
“This reflects a broader trend we’re seeing across Asia Pacific. According to Lenovo‘s CIO Playbook 2026, 98% of organizations in ASEAN+ plan to increase AI investments, with 70% preferring hybrid AI architectures that combine on-premises and edge environments to balance performance, security, regulatory compliance and cost. AI adoption is also broadening beyond IT departments; across ASEAN+, 67% of organizations are already piloting or systematically adopting AI, and across Asia Pacific, half of surveyed organizations report that non-IT departments are now funding AI initiatives,” she said.
As such, the next challenge is converting that investment into AI that works at scale. This creates opportunities across three areas in the year ahead: AI inferencing as the primary value engine employee productivity as a strategic focus driven by AI PCs and on-device AI agents, and scaling AI as the critical challenge as only about half of AI proofs-of-concept currently reach production.
“For Lenovo, this is where our end-to-end capabilities become particularly relevant to support organizations of all sizes through our portfolio spanning AI devices, infrastructure, edge computing, solutions and services. Regardless of where a business is in its AI journey, our focus remains the same: helping customers adopt AI in ways that solve real business challenges, strengthen competitiveness and deliver long-term value,” she said.
AI PCs to boost AI capabilities
“For many businesses, the challenge is not accessing AI but integrating it into work in a way that delivers immediate value without adding unnecessary complexity. AI PCs represent one of the most practical entry points into AI because they bring intelligent capabilities directly into employees' everyday work. Without requiring organizations to completely redesign their existing IT environments, AI PCs can help streamline everyday tasks such as creating documents, summarizing meetings, analyzing data, generating content and improving collaboration, making AI immediately relevant to day-to-day business operations,” Wong said.
For Wong, the significance of on-device AI goes beyond convenience. Lenovo’s CIO Playbook 2026 identifies hybrid AI as the preferred enterprise architecture, with 70% of ASEAN+ organizations choosing a model that blends public cloud, private cloud and on-premises compute..
Wong explained that this is because productivity happens where people work, which is on the devices, workspaces and edge environments employees use every day. On-device AI processing helps businesses improve responsiveness while keeping sensitive information closer to where it is created, which is particularly important as data sovereignty becomes a growing concern for Malaysian organizations.
“At Lenovo, we've embedded these capabilities across our AI PC portfolio. For instance, Lenovo AI Now is a local AI agent that operates on a personal knowledge base using on-device local large language models, removing the reliance on cloud processing and keeping data on the device. It can help users manage documents, summarize meetings, control device settings, create content, search files and retrieve insights through natural language prompts. In practice, that means a sales manager can draft proposals faster, a finance team can cut report review time, and HR can access policy information without hunting through shared drives,” Wong said.
As such, Wong believes that AI PCs are not the end goal, but as the first step in a broader AI transformation journey. They provide businesses with a practical way to democratize access to AI, build employee confidence and identify where AI creates the greatest value. For MSMEs, Wong believes this creates a lower-friction path for scale: starting with practical, everyday use cases at the individual level, then building the familiarity, internal capabilities and foundations needed to expand AI across the wider organization.
At the same time, Wong shared that while AI-ready devices provide employees with the tools to work more productively, organizations also need the right digital foundation, governance and skills to ensure AI is used effectively across the business. This becomes especially important as businesses look to scale AI beyond individual use cases into everyday operations.
“The data validates this. According to Lenovo‘s CIO Playbook 2026, while 67% of ASEAN+ organizations are now in late-stage AI adoption, only 39% have a comprehensive AI governance framework in place. This highlights a critical gap: AI adoption is moving faster than the organizational capabilities needed to govern and scale it effectively. Data quality, in-house expertise, integration complexity and organizational alignment are cited as key barriers that continue to slow readiness.” Wong explained.
For Wong, the businesses generating the greatest value from AI are those that treat these elements as part of one transformation strategy: adopting AI-ready devices with scalable technology that can grow alongside their business, while investing in employee enablement so teams understand not only how to use AI tools, but when and where they can deliver the greatest value.
“Ultimately, competitiveness will not be determined by who adopts the most AI, but by who can translate it into sustained business value. For MSMEs, that means investing with scale in mind – putting the right technology in place, building the capabilities of their people and establishing the governance needed to grow with confidence. When these elements come together, AI can move from an individual productivity tool to a capability that strengthens the business as a whole,” she added.
The role of partners
Lenovo’s channel partners in the region continue to play an important role in helping businesses identify the right use cases. In Southeast Asia, Lenovo works with a variety of partners, each catering to unique capabilities and serving customers based on their requirements.
Wong shared that Lenovo’s partners play a very important role as they understand their customers' industries, business priorities and operational challenges, allowing them to provide more tailored guidance throughout the adoption journey.
“This partner-centric approach aligns with what the market is asking for. Partners across the region, including those in Malaysia, have voiced a desire for more training and guidance from vendors. To support this, Lenovo continues to strengthen our partner ecosystem through initiatives such as Lenovo 360, which provides partners with easier access to training, technical enablement, solution resources and services capabilities,” Wong said.
“As AI, hybrid environments and modern IT become more sophisticated, we're also investing in programs like Lenovo 360 Tech Connect to help partners deepen their technical expertise and confidently deliver higher-value solutions for customers. Rather than focusing purely on products, we’re enabling our partners to become trusted technology advisors who can support businesses from planning and deployment through to ongoing optimization,” she said.
As Lenovo sees AI adoption as a collaborative journey, Wong added that by combining Lenovo‘s end-to-end portfolio with the expertise of its local partner ecosystem, the vendor is helping Malaysian businesses adopt AI in a way that is practical, scalable and aligned with their long-term business goals.
Managing AI costs
Partners also help customers, especially SMEs and MSMEs have better cost management when it comes to using AI. In fact, cost is understandably one of the biggest considerations for MSMEs, particularly when they are balancing day-to-day business priorities with long-term digital transformation.
In Malaysia, smaller organizations are often “priced out” of the IT solutions market due to high upfront costs, ongoing subscription fees and complex implementation requirements. Wong shared that the good news is that AI adoption doesn’t have to happen all at once. Rather than making large upfront investments, businesses can take a phased approach by starting with technologies that address immediate operational needs and scaling as they grow.
“At Lenovo, we focus on giving businesses greater flexibility in how they adopt technology. Through solutions such as Lenovo TruScale, organizations can access enterprise-grade infrastructure and services through a consumption-based model, reducing the need for significant upfront capital expenditure. Here in Malaysia, we‘ve seen this approach benefit businesses through our collaboration with local partner Microtree Sdn Bhd,” Wong said.
Established in Kuala Lumpur in 2004, Microtree Sdn Bhd (M3) is an end-to-end IT solutions and services provider with expertise in digital transformation, data management, network security and managed services. M3 has leveraged Lenovo TruScale Everything as a Service (XaaS) to develop flexible “as-a-service” offerings, including Device as a Service (DaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) that make digital infrastructure and data protection more accessible for SMEs. Customers leveraging the TruScale model have reported up to 30% faster rollouts, significantly accelerating their time to productivity.
“Ultimately, affordability isn‘t just about lowering costs, it’s about helping businesses maximize the value of every technology investment. By giving organizations the flexibility to adopt AI at their own pace, they can modernize confidently while ensuring every investment delivers measurable business outcomes,” she said.
Making the right choice
For Wong, when it comes investing in AI PCs, the starting point should not be which AI PC has the most features, but what business outcome the organization wants to achieve. For an MSME, that could mean improving employee productivity, strengthening security, enabling more effective hybrid work or accelerating content creation and collaboration. This is why the right AI PC is one that aligns with those business needs.
“The conversation is shifting from AI curiosity to AI accountability and it is this transition that will define which organizations lead in the years ahead. Businesses should consider how well a device fits into their broader technology strategy. Factors such as security, manageability, software compatibility, lifecycle support and the ability to support future AI workloads are just as important as processor performance,” she said.
For Malaysian businesses specifically, Wong believes that on-device AI capabilities offer a significant advantage when it comes to data sovereignty and security.
“Ultimately, selecting an AI PC is less about buying a new device and more about investing in a platform for future productivity. When businesses focus on long-term outcomes rather than short-term specifications, they‘ll be in a much stronger position to realize the full value of AI while supporting sustainable growth,” she concluded.