For years, artificial intelligence (AI) has loomed on the horizon. It has promised to revolutionize businesses by giving them a competitive edge through greater
accuracy, increased process speed and automation of manually intensive tasks.
Over the past year, AI has begun its move into the mainstream and is finally
beginning to deliver on its promise.
That said, many businesses with basic AI aren’t realizing its full benefits. More often, it’s those businesses with AI solutions purpose-built specifically for their data and use needs that are benefitting the most.
In this post, we’ll look at a few of the areas where AI is bringing real change to businesses, including finance, marketing and human resources.
AI in finance
AI offers finance leaders and their teams several benefits. In addition to faster revenue forecasting, it can bring greater speed and accuracy to financial reporting, and also help protect businesses against fraud with robust anomaly and error detection.
Experts recommend that companies looking to get the most from their AI investment consider purchasing a solution trained to meet their unique needs and challenges. While most pre-configured AI software packages can address finance needs such as accounts receivable and accounts payable, the real benefits come from bespoke AI solutions. When correctly trained, AI can perform deeper analysis while providing truly actionable insights.
Beyond the speed, accuracy and other day-to-day benefits AI brings to companies, one of the most appreciated advantages it offers is that it can allow finance leaders the freedom to spend less time on day-to-day tasks and more time looking at strategies and forecasts that can help meet their organization’s long-term challenges.
AI in marketing
Marketing teams are finding that AI’s competencies, once properly configured, are a natural fit with their needs, offering nearly endless possibilities for
reaching out to new customers and managing relationships with current ones. AI excels at a broad array of marketing tasks, including content creation,
audience segmentation, search engine optimization (SEO), data analysis,
customer service chatbots and much more.
By deploying AI tools, marketing departments can access near real-time results of their efforts, enabling faster, smarter decision-making and strategy adjustments. What’s more, AI can optimize all activities and functions related to sales orders and fulfillment. These abilities, coupled with AI’s robust data analysis proficiencies, can lead to an improved return on investment (ROI) on marketing campaigns and other initiatives, giving the company a significant advantage in the market.
AI in HR
Perhaps no department benefits from AI more than Human Resources. When carefully trained and deployed, AI offers companies next-level advantages, optimizing the employee lifecycle in the company through almost every area of HR (known as “recruitment-to-retirement”). It can streamline and enhance recruiting and onboarding, saving time while refining strategic decision-making, talent acquisition and retention, resulting in improved overall workforce management. In recruiting alone, AI’s ability to quickly shortlist candidates helps HR departments zero in on high-quality talent before competitors can, while faster, more efficient onboarding gets new hires up to speed and producing results quickly. Plus, AI’s ability to quickly identify potential candidates can also aid in filling short-term and temporary positions when needed.
In addition, AI streamlines and optimizes everyday HR functions such as payroll processing, benefits administration, and employee records management. What’s more, AI’s predictive analysis aids in performance management and evaluations, while also assisting in strategicassignments such as succession planning.
AI in supply chain and procurement
Beyond finance, marketing and human resources, AI can also play an important role in optimizing and streamlining tasks across your supply chain and procurement processes.
Supply chain
Companies deploying AI across their supply chain can:
- Rely on AI-powered demand forecasting to accurately predict customer demand
- Achieve improved quality through intelligent anomaly detection
- Enjoy streamlined operations and maximum efficiency with predictive maintenance
Procurement
AI can provide substantial benefits in procurement, including:
- Simplifying processes that lead to better purchasing decisions
- Sourcing of recommended quality suppliers who match your unique needs
- Accessing products and services that meet needs and maintain compliance
Putting AI to work in your business
While the case for AI is compelling, experts advise interested companies to perform their due diligence before choosing a solution. They recommend seeking out customizable software that can be trained to meet your company’s specific needs. Integrating the right AI in your company can revolutionize your business, giving you new levels of speed and efficiency, task automation, data-driven decision-making, improved employee experiences and more.