AI and Business Growth

How Artificial Intelligence Supports the Growth Goals of a Business?

At Pactera EDGE, we believe that businesses can and should use artificial intelligence (AI) to support growth, meet strategic goals, and achieve transformation. Although many businesses deploy AI as a surgeon’s knife to cut costs, AI can do far more. A recently published report from the IBM Institute for Business Value underscores what we believe about AI and how we help companies apply AI.??

How to Create Business Value with AI?

The IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV), in collaboration with the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, interviewed individuals involved in deep-learning projects from over 35 real-life AI implementations around the globe. IBM talked to business and technology experts from more than a dozen industries about their AI goals, challenges, and learnings. The results were published in a report, How to Create Business Value with AI.??

Among the key findings:?

• AI is evolving from being a cost-cutting tool to helping businesses achieve strategic growth objectives such as improving customer service. IBM says that businesses need to abandon a widespread belief that cost-cutting is AI’s sweet spot. Per the report, “Applying AI to business problem-solving can indeed reduce cost, but that’s not all it can do. Leading organizations are actively (and strategically) seeking competitive differentiation with AI, achieving top-line oriented process efficiencies, growth, and business model innovation. Cost matters, but growth, innovation, and societal good matter more. IBV research shows organizations have consistently ranked customer-centered growth as the top area where they see the greatest business impact from AI.?
• AI can enable transformation, but few companies are doing that: “Can AI be an enabler of top-line growth? Absolutely. For some innovative AI adopters, such as NVIDIA, NavTech, and others, AI helps create entirely new offerings and even new business models. Few enterprises, however, are using it for such broad transformation yet. Used strategically to fuel thoughtful, ethical AI, companies are reaping not only financial rewards but an uptick in open innovation. This, in turn, continues to deliver other economic benefits of scale—especially among more advanced AI adopters.”??

Finding Validate Our Own Approach?

At Pactera EDGE, we’ve worked with many clients to support important growth objectives with AI, and we’ve rapidly accumulated enough experience and knowledge capital to develop repeatable offerings for multiple clients. For example:??

• Our offering CMO.AI helps CMOs use AI to transform growth marketing by achieving breakthroughs with personalization and conducting real-time experimentation in order to test and learn better ways of marketing. Our approach is the exact opposite of wielding AI as a cost-cutting tool. Although we certainly believe that AI can achieve benefits such as lower costs and improved efficiencies, we start by developing a strategy aligned with your business goals, looking closely at the data that's available, and the channels your brand and customers are using, to determine how each can be leveraged to drive growth and automation.??
• Meerkat is an all-in-one demand, pricing, and promotions planning platform from Pactera EDGE that gives businesses the ability to deliver the right product, at the right moment, at the right price while simultaneously delivering financial value for their stakeholders. By transforming essential business functions such as demand forecasting, Meerkat supports essential business growth goals such as being more sustainable and profitable at the same time. Sustainability remains a top-of-mind issue for CEOs as they respond to a more values-conscious consumer as well as investors who expect firms to connect sustainability to profitability.?
• Lighthouse and Scout make it possible for retailers to improve customer service and safeguard stores. For instance, Lighthouse consists of an AI engine to help retailers keep track of inventory levels in the store; a mobile app for information capture and staff support; and an insight business platform to support decision-making at the corporate office, which aligns strategic planning with in-store operations. With insight from Scout, retailers can make informed decisions faster and more accurately, leading to more time devoted to customer-facing needs and more accurate inventory levels on the store floor. And both retailers and consumer packaged goods companies can collaborate more effectively to manage their supply chains.?

The above are but a few examples of many offerings we’ve been rolling out.??

As to whether AI can support business transformation across the entire enterprise: absolutely it can. But the business first needs to identify the need for transformation and develop a strategic approach to do that, which must include new ways of working and a willingness to effect a mindset change throughout the company. AI is an enabler, not the driver. We suggest businesses develop their “AI sea legs” by solving challenges such as improving customer service – then scale the use of AI, as opposed to going all-in with AI before a business has had a chance to solve every day needs and achieve transformation at the departmental level.?