AI as key driver for competitive edge - lessons from early adopters

AI is “exponentially more impactful than the internet” and is the foremost priority for businesses in 2024 and beyond, reports Constellation Research.

The Silicon-Valley based research firm and Dialpad recently surveyed 1000 senior executives on their AI initiatives and reported that more than 77 per cent of respondents believe AI will give them a competitive advantage.

The respondents expressed a significant interest in allocating a large part of their budget towards implementing AI in customer experience (CX), sales, and general business programmes.

“AI adoption is clearly a top priority for executives in the C-suite reporting to the CEO - or what is commonly known as? CxOs - with the focus on implementing AI projects that align with their company’s priorities and learning from early adopters,” says R "Ray" Wang , principal analyst and founder of the Silicon-Valley based analyst firm.?

The survey, conducted from December 2023 to January 2024, had respondents from New Zealand, the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia.

The early adopters are applying #AI to these top categories:

• Analytics: C-level executives want to know more from both rearview-mirror analytics and predictive analytics.
• Automating work: Organisations plan to automate highly repetitive and mundane tasks, and free up time for more strategic tasks.
• Communication or content creation: Executives anticipate quicker content production and higher levels of orchestration.

• Forecasting: Leaders believe the ability to improve accuracy can bring cost savings that bolster the bottom line.
• Customer insights: Leaders will use new information to create new sources of revenue.?

Reskilling/upskilling

“The cultural path to AI will require dedicated training, reskilling, and investment for employees,” writes Wang in his report on Secrets to a Successful AI Strategy.

In the survey, just over 71 per cent of? CxOs plan to reskill workers for AI. Majority of respondents (67.92 per cent) likewise aim to enhance their own AI skills (67.92 per cent).

Wang calls on leaders to take time to provide up-to-date training for human and machine collaboration, as well as create a workplace “that supports learning in general as well as learning from failure”. They must also develop training programmes designed for humans operating at machine scale.

The 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report from 微软 and LinkedIn also highlights why it is critical for organisations to upskill staff for the GenAI era.

The report says three out of four knowledge workers already use AI at work, and usage nearly doubled in the last six months. Across the globe, skills are projected to change by 50 per cent by 2030 (from 2016), and generative AI is expected to further accelerate this change.

The survey, conducted online by Edelman Data & Intelligence, covered 31,000 full-time employed or self-employed knowledge workers across 31 markets including New Zealand in February and March this year.

Queried on AI’s impact on job creation and loss, LinkedIn CEO?

Ryan Roslansky states: “If you think about your job as a set of tasks and then you take a look at which tasks have a high probability of being automated by AI, you can start to make better sense of your job and your role. It turns out the large majority of jobs are both tasks that can be automated and a set of human tasks that cannot be automated. So in those cases, it is incumbent upon everyone to start to better learn those AI tools.”