Artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay, and its role in business continues to grow. However, while 70 per cent of business leaders anticipate that AI will disrupt their industry within the next five years, only 20 per cent feel their organisation is adequately prepared for this impending change.

According to a recent poll, in order to address this issue, 66 per cent of executives will recruit AI specialists externally, while 34 per cent said they will train existing staff to fill the technological gap.

But is this enough? What do business leaders really need to know about artificial intelligence – and how exactly can we utilise this wave of technology to increase our return on investment (ROI) significantly?

This article is designed to shine a light not only on the power of AI in business but also on real-life, usable steps for incorporating AI into a company seamlessly and successfully.

The benefits of AI

Let’s take a look at the various benefits AI can bring to a business. For us at Lean Partner, we merge the Lean Six Sigma methodology with our approach to using AI in several ways, where everything we do must create value for the end customer.

With this in mind, the first big benefit is that AI can greatly improve productivity. With AI automating repetitive tasks, business leaders can focus on enhancing customer service or developing new products instead of worrying about manual data entry or account management.

In fact, when it comes to improving customer service, AI can also play a role. Through Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning capabilities, AI-based customer service platforms are able to speed up response times and offer personalised recommendations based on purchase or browsing history, improving the overall customer experience.

From here, let’s look at how AI can impact both sales and marketing strategies. Business owners can use AI to gather data on customer preferences, market profiles, and competitor activities. In turn, AI’s more efficient capacity for data analytics can also identify the best ways to allocate marketing budgets and which marketing channels are more likely to bear fruit – and of course, automating marketing tasks is a breeze with AI as well.

Finally, let’s look at every business’s bread and butter – finance. At the root level, AI is fantastic for anything involving numbers, so budgeting, forecasting and planning can be completely automated, as well as cash flow and liquidity management and other operational support services.

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Looking even further afield, AI can also assist with risk management, fraud detection, and tax optimisation, or even compliance with regulations around reporting corporate earnings or bank accounts abroad! All in all, it’s clear that using AI can make any business run smoother, faster, and more efficiently.

Using AI to Improve Your ROI

With all that in mind, here are four practical steps any business owner can take to start implementing AI into the day-to-day workflow. Firstly, identify high-impact areas by asking, “Which parts of the business can quickly and positively benefit from AI?” For example, an e-commerce company could start by automating the categorization and tagging of product images to save time and improve accuracy.

Next, create a strategic AI roadmap with clear goals for the identified high-impact areas. Using the example above, the goal could be to reduce image tagging time by 50% within six months. Start with a small pilot project to test various AI image recognition tools and identify the best one. Once found, implement that tool for all product images.

On that note, the third step is to invest in both the right tools and talent. While having image recognition software is good, for further efficiency, finding a machine learning-based image recognition tool that can automatically tag product images and continuously update its own database would work even better. Then, hiring a data scientist to lead the project and train the team on using the new tool would be the perfect follow-up.

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Finally, it is imperative to continuously monitor and optimise the AI tool. Here, the measurable data points to track regularly include the time saved and the overall accuracy of the AI tool. This ongoing monitoring allows for adjustments and refinements to the tool’s settings, facilitating further enhancements in its performance over time.

The stories of AI-forward success

We not only wholeheartedly believe in the power of AI to completely transform operational efficiency, but have seen it for ourselves. Among the clients we’ve assisted, many have been able to leverage AI tools to improve their day-to-day workflow in leaps and bounds.

For one, a hospital used AI for early disease detection, analysing patient data to swiftly identify disease patterns for faster diagnoses and improved patient outcomes. Similarly, a bank employed AI to detect fraudulent transactions, automatically flagging suspicious activities to prevent financial losses and maintain customer trust.

Additionally, we also assisted a manufacturing plant in integrating AI for predictive maintenance, analysing machinery sensor data to predict and prevent equipment failures, reducing downtime, and production losses, and extending equipment lifespan.

In conclusion, the integration of AI technologies offers a practical pathway to achieving – and even surpassing – a 10x ROI. The strategic application of AI can unlock new levels of efficiency, innovation, and profitability. The journey of using AI to boost ROI is complex, but with the right approach, it is well within reach for businesses ready to embrace the AI revolution.

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