What can you do with AI technology that everyone else can’t do?

As business leaders continue to navigate the challenges of COVID-19, customers, employees, and the broad ecosystem of stakeholders are scrutinizing every move in microscopic detail. The connections between business and society are changing, and a bright spotlight is focused on the fundamental nature of companies, their character, and their brand(s).

As existential questions arise, brands will need to be relational, not transactional; it’s time for innovation to come to the forefront.

Kartik Hosanagar, University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, has taught a course on the business impact of emerging tech for 17 years at the. Lately, interest in artificial intelligence has been growing dramatically.

Jeremy Kahn, with Fortune Magazine, spoke to Hosanagar about what he sees happening with AI in business, especially in light of the pandemic. He told Jeremy that the immediate pressures—both practical and financial—might make it difficult for companies to think strategically about how to use AI.

He said companies are likely to be distracted from strategic thinking and focused on how to use AI to help their employees to be more productive, many of whom are working from home. And many companies will be looking for ways in which AI can save them money. “I think there are going to be a lot of cases of using AI for cost-cutting and efficiency,” he says.

However, AI’s real gains lie elsewhere. The most successful companies, he says, will be those that can take a step back and think about how they can use AI to do something far more strategic. “The question is, what can you do uniquely with AI technology that everyone else can’t do?”

There is nothing more strategic then improving sales and marketing processes, efficiency, and ROI. Figuring out how best to use AI strategically requires a realistic understanding of what your customers want and how this fits with your overall brand and market position.

Bilin Technology uses predictive analytics powered by advanced AI to track the digital clues left by prospective clients, including their content consumption, and monitor for spikes in activity that indicate a buying window is opening. Additionally, social media content engines scan for actions of individuals that match the spikes in content consumption.

The data provides a targeted list of prospects sourced from the entire sphere of likely buyers at a time when it is most critical for sales to reach out to them with the company’s message. In other words, this is actionable data that marketing and sales teams can use to target the right companies, at the right time, through the right individuals - maximizing resources, creating predictable sales pipelines, and driving revenue growth.

“AI excels at tasks that are highly repetitive,” Hosnagar says. “Corporate strategy is not highly repetitive. It is highly creative, and there is a lot of scenarios where there is not a lot of data.” Company websites can produce tons of actionable data through the right platform.

Give your data a voice? and achieve a strategic impact on your AI and sales initiatives. h