In our last blog post, we looked at ways that artificial intelligence is helping transform the financial services industry. In this blog post, we continue with the AI theme but turn our attention to what AI means for the C-Suite.
More than ever, businesses are pressing on ways that AI can bring real tangible benefits to the enterprise. That said, some businesses still have concerns, whether it be a lack of infrastructure or raw talent.
It pays for leaders in the C-Suite to recognize the value-add that AI can bring to their organizations. Otherwise, businesses risk getting left behind in their highly competitive industries.
Download our guide to help you introduce artificial intelligence to your business.
Improved Decision Making
Let’s get this out of the way first – machines and artificial intelligence aren’t going to completely replace humans in the foreseeable future. As a decision-maker, AI is also a long way from being able to solve problems or answer questions that are badly formed.
For example, you can’t ask an AI agent “who are my top-performing sales managers?” AI algorithms need a frame of reference (or training data) to help it arrive at those sorts of answers. It effectively must be taught what constitutes “top-performing” sales managers.
[bctt tweet=”AI can provide better insight into the company workforce, help identify training opportunities and highlight new emerging leaders.” username=”GAPapps”]
That said, when an AI algorithm has been trained with sufficient data and it knows what to look for, it can be a very effective tool in helping the business identify patterns, insights and signals that may have otherwise been lost in the “noise.”
Making decisions based solely on results generated by an AI algorithm understandably may be something new that decision-makers might grapple with. It’s likely that decisions such as “should we acquire this business” are going to need additional information such as financial audits, cash flow, financial projections, staffing and many other data points that are simply too scattered to process by an AI algorithm.
C-Suite executives that adopt AI will no doubt still rely on gut and past experiences. AI, however, can let executives rule out ideas, thoughts or processes they are unsure about and make decisions based on data generated by artificial intelligence algorithms.
Download our guide to help you introduce artificial intelligence to your business.
Human Resources
Another important area for C-Suite is human resources. Using artificial intelligence to gather data on employees makes it easier for the business to identify areas where staff excel in or in other cases, where additional training may be required.
AI can provide better insight into the company workforce, help identify training opportunities, highlight new emerging leaders and improve diversity.
Another important aspect is that of staff retention and reducing staff turnover. Quite often, especially in software projects, when developers leave, large gaps in product or project knowledge are hard to plug. According to Digitalist Magazine, AI technology spots patterns found in historical data to predict future behavior, identify risks and uncover opportunities. These historical data patterns from employees that have already left can help train AI to predict who is about to leave and why. Chief HR Officers can intervene and plan accordingly.
AdTech
After AI gains are integrated into decision-making procedures and policies, it’s not out of the realm of possibility for algorithms to be used in other areas of the business. For example, consider analytics and marketing. In recent years, it’s safe to say the role of the CMO has drastically changed.
With a reported 2 billion+ people on Facebook around the world and as many as 68% of Americans being on the social media platform, we’ve seen TV, radio and paper ads being replaced with digital ads in social media user’s timelines.
More importantly, gone are the days of intrusive marketing and shouting “loud enough.” Platforms like Facebook and Twitter, along with development partners such as Social Opinion, have developed technology that allows marketers to target the right person, with the right message, and perhaps, more importantly – at the right time.
Retail is particularly suited for AI, according to The Conversation. For example, AI algorithms can be trained to look for patterns that elicit signals that a user is on the lookout for a new car. A user may start browsing the internet, pricing up car insurance. A Twitter tracking pixel can be dropped on the insurance provider’s website, which feeds data back to Twitter. This data gets ingested, along with other datasets such as browser cookies, that are then processed by AI routines which help generate car dealership ads.
These ads can then be injected directly into the user’s timeline, thereby improving the chances of a sale or call to the dealership.
Activities like this can help CMOs increase the bottom line for the business and raise awareness of new products or services.
[bctt tweet=”Advances in natural language processing have allowed chatbots to act as virtual agents.” username=”GAPapps”]
Chief (Virtual) Marketing Officer Chatbot
Ok, so we did say that AI won’t replace humans, and to be honest, any replacing that occurs will be more likely to happen in repetitive, menial tasks.
Staying on the marketing theme for a minute though, AI, or more specifically, chatbots, powered by advancements in natural language processing, can act as virtual agents or knowledge bases to help businesses or brands identify which ad campaigns they should run and what campaigns are going to be successful.
By bringing together big data, whether it be external or internal data, structured or unstructured, the business can blend together this information using analytics and artificial intelligence that can be used to drive chatbot intelligence – or your Virtual Marketing Officer.
Final Thoughts
Finally, if you’re considering introducing artificial intelligence into your business or organization, some things to consider are:
- Identify suitable AI projects by concentrating on areas of the business that would benefit from increased productivity or reduced costs
- Get data in shape to help train algorithms
- Push for implementations across departments
- Ensure leaders have continued support
- Set short, medium and long-term adoptions plans for your AI rollout
- Define how you’ll measure “success”
- Reassure teams and staff that technology isn’t going to replace them
The importance of your training data can’t be underestimated. Identify important KPIs and respective thresholds that any AI algorithm needs to meet in terms of any results it may generate.
Summary
In this blog post, we’ve looked at what artificial intelligence can bring to the C-Suite. We’ve seen that while AI isn’t going to wipe out the C-Suite, it certainly has the potential to bring a lot of value to the business. Whether it’s helping executives make decisions based on data, or providing predictions to the human resources department, introducing artificial intelligence to your business is something that you might want to consider.
We’ve also seen how by leveraging existing data silos, AI-powered chatbots can be used to augment the CMO’s existing capabilities to help roll out marketing campaigns.
Here at Growth Acceleration Partners, we have extensive expertise in many verticals. Our nearshore business model can keep costs down while maintaining the same level of quality and professionalism you’d experience from a domestic team.
Our Centers of Engineering Excellence in Latin America focus on combining business acumen with development expertise to help your business. We can provide your organization with resources in the following areas:
- Software development for cloud and mobile applications
- Data analytics and data science
- Information systems
- Machine learning and artificial intelligence
- Predictive modeling
- QA and QA Automation
If you’d like to find out more, then visit our website here. Or if you’d prefer, why not arrange a call with us?
