7 Benefits Of AI for Business

Few recent trends have transformed the business world as quickly as artificial intelligence (AI). This technology can simulate human intelligence to recognize speech, make decisions, and solve complex problems. Its ability to do all this with near-instant results has quickly made it one of the most popular tools for organizations. More than half of employees use it daily, and around 68% of them would like to see their organization use it more.

Organizations have understood AI's benefits for some time. However, individual employees are becoming more aware of how AI can complement their work. Both organizations and their employees benefit from AI as it helps them better engage with their customers, improve their operations, and save money. These systems will continue to grow in the years to come, impacting nearly every employee in every sector.

The applications of AI in the workplace are almost too numerous to explain. Still, it's critical for everyone, from entry-level employees to the C-suite, to understand the benefits of AI in an increasingly digital world. Here are six ways artificial intelligence offers unprecedented opportunities for your organization’s sustained growth and innovation in a competitive world.

On this page:

• Enhanced Decision-Making
• Increased Efficiency and Productivity
• Improved Customer Experience
• Cost Savings and Resource Optimizations
• Innovation and Competitive Advantage
• Risk Management and Fraud Detection
• Streamlining Supply Chain and Logistics Management
• AI Adoption Strategies
• Future Trends in AI for Business
• Conclusion

#1. Enhanced Decision-Making

Your decisions can impact your organization and its ability to reach its goals successfully. The data collected by your organization can give you the insights you need to make crucial decisions. Without the aid of AI, you run the risk of making the wrong conclusions from your data. AI provides advanced tools and techniques for automating data analysis and generating insights. AI algorithms can clean, organize, structure, and process vast amounts of data at high speed, identifying patterns and trends that would be difficult for humans to discern.

Some examples of how AI has helped organizations make impactful, data-driven decisions include:

• Retailers use AI and big data to maintain proper stock inventory
• Online retailers sell more products by showing customers AI-suggested items
• Google uses AI-assisted search results to return the best possible links within the first five results for users
• JPMorgan Chase uses AI algorithms to detect fraud and manage risk
• The Golden State Warriors basketball team uses AI and data-driven decision-making to build an NBA championship roster

AI’s power to provide insights into your data will allow your organization to make data-driven decisions that help you meet your goals.

#2. Increased Efficiency and Productivity

56% of businesses use AI to improve and perfect operations, usually by automating repetitive tasks. Removing repetitive tasks can free your employees' time to focus on more intensive or mission-critical work. There are many examples of how AI can automate tasks, including:

AI saves a massive amount of time and effort, allowing your employees to focus on the most important tasks that will propel your organization’s success.

#3. Improved Customer Experience

If your organization routinely suggests products or services your customers aren't interested in, they will find an organization that better understands their needs. Customers want to be treated like individuals, not identification numbers. That's why 46% of businesses use AI for customer relationship management, leveraging the technology to learn more about their customers to deliver a more personalized experience.

AI can improve the overall customer experience through personalization. Using customer data, organizations can build brand loyalty through personalized marketing tactics based on individual preferences and behavior, which will resonate with existing and new customers. AI can create curated product and service recommendations, promotions, and content that resonates with your customers' preferences, driving engagement and loyalty.

Some examples of organizations successfully utilizing AI insights into their customers' preferences include:

• Netflix: Creates recommendations about new shows based on their customers' viewing history, providing a curated customer experience.

• Amazon: Prompts additional purchases by suggesting items frequently bought together with the item customers are purchasing. They also use customer purchase history to make recommendations on products that will potentially appeal to them.

• Google News, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram: Curate personalized content feeds based on customers' interests.

Another aspect of the customer experience that AI can improve is customer support. Through Natural Language Processing (NLP), customer service chatbots can understand and interpret customers' language. Chatbots parse the text, identify keywords, and understand the context and intent of customers' messages.

Using this process, AI can respond to customers with helpful information. Many organizations use chatbots and virtual assistants as customers' first point of contact, offering 24/7 assistance to reduce response times. This leads to happier, more engaged, and loyal customers.

#4. Cost Savings and Resource Optimizations

The number one reason your organization should integrate AI into its workflows is that it reduces operational costs when properly implemented. With correct implementation, AI can provide organizations with significant cost savings and resource optimization by automating mundane tasks, streamlining processes, and providing insights into potential areas of improvement. productivity.

There are many examples of how AI can reduce operational costs, including:

• Using AI-driven robots to pick and pack orders in warehouses to prepare for shipping, reducing labor costs.

• Implementing chatbots to handle basic customer service questions, allowing human agents to focus on more complex issues.

• Integrating Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) powered by AI to automate HR resume screenings and find the most relevant candidates (nearly 99% of all Fortune 500 organizations use ATS platforms).

• Leveraging AI algorithmic forecasting to accurately predict customer demand, as McDonald's does, ensuring the right quantity of products are ordered, which helps reduce waste and optimize inventory levels.

• Improving supply chain efficiency through AI-powered demand prediction and optimization, similar to Walmart's approach, which also uses facial recognition as part of their inventory management system to quickly identify and restock items.

These examples demonstrate how AI can be applied across various business functions to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and drive overall productivity.

#5. Innovation and Competitive Advantage

Pharmaceutical R&D teams use AI's power to detect patterns in large, complex data sets. For example, the startup Keystonemab uses IBM Watson to leverage AI's power to analyze millions of scientific papers to help discover new treatments and therapies. Using NLP, Keystonemab quickly finds actionable insights that would take years for scientists to discover independently.

#6. Risk Management and Fraud Detection

Few things can damage an organization’s reputation and bottom line as quickly as security issues and operational disruptions. Today, financial institutions like PayPal, Mastercard, and Bank of America use AI to monitor and analyze real-time transaction data, such as user behavior and device information, to identify and prevent fraudulent activities.

#7. Streamlining Supply Chain and Logistics Management

Managing supply chain operations with AI has become an indispensable tool for organizations to create and manage a responsive and flexible supply chain and logistical framework. AI predictive analytics looks at purchasing trends, customer preferences, and other factors to predict supply and demand needs more accurately. These insights allow organizations to better manage resources, reduce inventory cost, and ensure on-time product delivery.

Examples:

• UPS uses AI-powered route optimization software to analyze package delivery data to create the most efficient delivery routes and reduce both fuel costs and their carbon footprint.

• Amazon uses AI and machine learning to optimize warehouse management and order fulfillment to ensure accurate deliveries.

AI Adoption Strategies

Every organization exists to deliver value to its customers and stakeholders. The best way to provide value is by producing more quality products or services or reducing waste and inefficiency. Just like computers, the Internet, and the cloud have improved organizations' ability to deliver value, AI is a tool your organization cannot ignore if you want to compete in the modern world.

Here are steps you can take to build an AI adoption strategy for your organization:

• Commit to embracing cutting-edge technology. 

• Look for repetitive business functions, processes, and tasks that take up your employees’ valuable time.

• Explore AI options to enhance employee performance and automate repetitive processes.

• Train or hire employees with AI knowledge and skills.

• Continually work to improve delivering value to your organization’s stakeholders.

Future Trends in AI for Business

One of the biggest trends of the near future is hyperautomation. Hyperautomation combines multiple technologies to automate complex processes to enhance efficiency and accuracy beyond typical automation. The technologies used in hyper-automation include:

• Robotic Process Automation (RPA): Automates repetitive rule-based tasks

• AI: Enhances decision-making through ML, NLP, and other AI techniques

• Machine Learning (ML): Learns from data to improve processes and make predictions

• Business Process Management (BPM): Analyzes and optimizes end-to-end business workflows

• Integration Tools: Connects systems to enable data flow and coordination

Hyper-automation provides organizations with several benefits such as end-to-end automation, scalability, increased agility, data driven decision-making, and stronger human-AI collaboration. With this power, your organization can become more agile and competitive in the constantly evolving worlds of technology and business.

While the increased power and use of AI are transforming organizations, they are also leading to increased fear among employees about the potential for job displacement. In a recent CNBC SurveyMonkey Workforce survey, 42% of employees are concerned about AI’s impact on their jobs. However, according to predictions by the World Economic Forum, AI will create approximately 97 million new roles. AI's impact on job creation means employees have a prime opportunity to upskill and integrate AI into their skillset, enhancing their value to the organization.

Conclusion

The conversation around AI in business is changing every day. With so many use cases, it's hard to contextualize its full potential to revolutionize every industry. Transformations of this scale are not without their challenges, especially as workers fear job displacement. However, businesses and individuals alike must realize that AI provides a remarkable organizational and personal growth opportunity. As organizations integrate AI into their operations, employees will have unprecedented opportunities to drive success.

Thriving organizations will leverage AI to its fullest, continuously innovating and optimizing their operations. Likewise, the workers who will thrive will be those who learn how to help their employers succeed in this new era.

It is essential that you have conversations about integrating AI and discuss the plan for its use within your organization to help allay your employees’ fears. To help with a transition to AI, you must create and foster a culture of innovation and exploration. New Horizons is ready to help by preparing you to achieve the AI for Business Professionals (AIBIZ™) Certification. There is no better time to gain the skills and expertise needed to thrive in an AI-driven economy.