Artificial intelligence: The future of businesses

The future belongs to intelligent automation. With that said, organizations adopting artificial intelligence (AI) or giving it a top priority in their digital transformation initiatives will be the leaders for tomorrow.

AI adoption comes with its own set of challenges and opportunities. One of the most common misnomers of AI adoption is that it poses a threat to jobs, which cannot be farther from the truth. It’s time for organizations to embrace AI as “machines for humans” instead of “humans vs. machines.”  AI can be used to perform specific tasks that generally require human intelligence. This can help employees focus on tasks of greater value while reducing the chances of human error and increasing overall productivity. AI promises improved processes, operational efficiency, and substantial cost savings.

Now, whether an organization will succeed in its AI initiatives hinges on several factors. One of the most crucial factors is how accurately the enterprise leaders can define the use case for which they are trying to deploy AI automation.

Artificial intelligence can help with enterprise-wide transformation

A McKinsey report suggests that 85% of companies have accelerated digitization post-pandemic, and 67% of them have specifically amped up AI automation.Organizations are embracing different AI automation technologies to improve their business outcomes. While some are making incremental changes to optimize existing systems and processes, others are introducing new capabilities and customer experiences.

Broad Areas of AI Implementation

1. Automating Processes: Automating common digital and physical tasks (particularly back-office operations and financial activities) using robotic process automation, the last mile of process automation
2. Extracting Cognitive Insights: Machine-learning applications that use algorithms to analyze data troves to detect patterns
3. Driving Cognitive Engagements: Chatbots and intelligent agents that use machine learning and natural language processing to engage with customers and employees

Artificial intelligence implementations are not restricted to any particular industry or department

AI-enabled enterprises are changing the way we think about everyday things by making them simpler and more effective. Use cases span industries - from financial services, insurance, manufacturing, healthcare, education, retail, and more. There is a multitude of AI use cases across departments, from IT, HR, finance to business operations and more. AI is revolutionizing the digital experience at both ends - for employees as well as customers by:

• Enabling rapid, end-to-end process automation
• Making processes leaner and faster
• Enabling shorter development cycles for quicker ROI
• Extending process component reusability, which keeps cost under control
• Empowering professional IT developers with AI-based applications
• Ensuring adherence to compliances
• Speeding up and personalizing customer service
• Enabling real-time monitoring
• Reducing errors

A glimpse into how artificial intelligence is driving transformation for banking and insurance companies

AI in Banking:

AI is becoming a gamechanger in the banking industry.  The use of AI is vital at every stage --- in lending, customer service, fraud protection, employee management/training/hiring, and more. It can help banks reach potential clients more efficiently, develop more innovative products, build better relationships, enhance customer experience, and improve service delivery. Here’s how banks can successfully leverage it:

• Smart and intelligent AI automation can help humans get rid of repetitive tasks, and they can focus on providing more personalized services requiring a human interface. Tools like optical character readers can capture data with which the machine learning software can generate insights, reducing the back-office processing effort
• Financial institutions can use analytics to comprehend customer data and develop tailor-made products and services. Also, they can leverage AI tools to keep a check on suspicious/dubious emails to prevent security breaches
• AI tools like a chatbot or a virtual assistant can enhance the productivity and efficiency of the workforce. A chatbot can be used for customer support
• Customized products can be offered to customers by using technology to analyze historical data, understand risk appetite and income profile. Customer’s personalized portfolios can be managed by AI software, which is unbiased and is capable of intelligently managing portfolios while ensuring higher volumes than humans

AI in Insurance:

AI can disrupt the insurance industry by reshaping claims settlement, underwriting, pricing, customer experience, etc. AI automation can help insurers by-

• Empowering them with detailed and accurate actuarial modeling
• Optimizing services by providing the ‘next best action’ to customers, brokers, and third partiesthrough analysis of preferences and past interactions
• Empowering employees with faster, data-driven decisions
• Detecting claims fraud
• Automating and personalizing communications

AI-driven Growth Is a Certainty. Where Are You on the AI Adoption Spectrum?

Artificial intelligence and automation together will enable companies to speed up productivity, boost customer and employee experiences, expedite time-to-value by fast-tracking changes, and more. It will help enterprises solve challenges which employees and existing processes couldn’t scale to meet.

A Gartner study suggests that by 2022 the average number of AI projects per company will witness a 250% increase, from 10 projects in 2020 to 35 in 2022.²However, AI adoption commands a change in culture and the perception around intelligent automation technologies to facilitate large-scale adoption.

To make AI projects successful, business leaders must deep-dive into identifying the low-hanging fruits that qualify as the perfect opportunities/use cases and zero in on the right AI technology to drive it to success.

Are you ready to take the AI leap?

The article has been written by Varun Goswami, Global Head - New Products COE, Newgen Software