AI is ushering in a new age of productivity growth, human and robotic collaboration and, most importantly, the intuitiveness sought by consumers. Artificial intelligence pinpoints areas of opportunity and delivers personal insights that drive innovation. Whether a company is experiencing overall business growth, or seasonal or temporary growth, AI’s predictive and scalable platform allows businesses to respond quickly and smoothly to the needs of their customers and to changes in the market. AI is optimizing and modernizing companies and helping them rethink how they do business.

AI is becoming increasingly important in business. It is embedded in many applications by default to leverage features, such as recommendations, next best actions and natural language generation (NLG) based analytics. Employing AI effectively requires a clear focus on applying intelligent technologies to solve tough operational challenges and deliver a lift to the business.

Today’s businesses are using AI in many ways. For example:

• A utility deployed voice-activated, AI-driven chatbot to help executives, account managers and field-service technicians conduct research into services and solutions using voice commands or typed queries—which helped the company streamline customer interactions and enhance user experience
• An insurer used machine learning and geospatial analysis to better understand the complex flood insurance market and identified a $3.3-billion new business opportunity

To create a rigorous AI strategy, a company must look beyond technological capabilities. Each business challenge will require different tools, techniques and approaches. Leveraging AI requires extensive experimentation and the ability to apply learnings to the next stage of deployment. Companies need to factor that reality into their plans. A strategy should begin by emphasizing business value/impact and ethical/responsible behavior, rather than the technology’s capabilities and algorithms.