The best uses of AI for business
Learn how to use AI tools for business, including AI applications that enhance your current employee and organizational needs.
Jan 24, 2024 • 4 Minute Read
With AI popping up everywhere, organizations that don’t use these emerging technologies risk lagging behind. 94% of executives and 92% of IT professionals believe organizations who don’t invest in AI in the near future will fall behind the competition.
But AI adoption alone isn’t enough to push your organization ahead. You need to know how to use AI technology to drive business value. In this post, we explore common reasons organizations adopt AI tools and how you can use this tech to make a lasting impact.
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Table of contents
The future of AI and business is on the way
AI is already in the workplace: 20% of organizations have formally deployed AI tools and technology, and 55% plan to soon. Even organizations without sweeping AI policies tend to let employees use AI tools on their own. But deploying AI and driving value with it are two different things.
How can AI be used in business?
Organizations primarily use AI tools to boost efficiency and enhance specific business functions. According to the executives surveyed for our AI skills report, some of the most common applications of AI include improving:
Data analysis
Security and fraud prevention
Marketing
Forecasting
Supply chain management
Customer experience and support
Employee experience
HR and recruitment processes
How to use AI in your organization: 7 use cases
There’s no shortage of AI use cases. But the applications that make sense for your organization will depend on your business needs and goals.
Before you dive into using AI for business, identify the problems or challenges you want AI to solve. Where will AI tools make the most impact? These examples explore some of the main ways organizations are using AI to improve the employee and customer experience.
1. Boost sales with AI automation
AI frees sales reps from repetitive, time-consuming tasks like scheduling meetings, drafting emails, and creating reports. AI systems can also help teams find targeted leads, build personalized outreach sequences, and create more accurate sales forecasts.
This allows them to focus on their most important (and irreplaceable) responsibility: building meaningful relationships.
2. Improve customer service with chatbots and customer data insights
Improving the customer experience and customer support is one of executives’ top reasons for adopting AI tools.
With AI-powered chatbots, customers can quickly find answers without waiting to speak with a representative. Automated sentiment analysis and text classification classify and categorize customer inquiries so reps can respond to them faster.
Meanwhile, AI tools can aggregate and analyze this information to pull out customer data insights and empower teams to create more efficient, personalized customer experiences.
3. Upgrade hiring and HR processes
Many recruiters and HR teams already use AI to screen candidate resumes, identify relevant open positions, and shorten time to hire. Organizations can also use AI tools to power HR analytics and use those insights to improve employee satisfaction, retention rates, and performance management.
Discover how to use AI for the hiring and recruitment process.
4. Streamline IT operations with AIOps
AIOps combines AI/ML, natural language processing, and predictive analytics to help IT teams respond to incidents before customers or business operations are impacted. AI can automate error detection, alert analysis, and remediation and improve reliability and availability in the process.
5. Improve the developer experience
AI coding assistants are now part of the developer landscape. Tools like Copilot, CodeWhisperer, and Tabnine offer real-time code suggestions that enable programmers to write code faster and spend less time researching. AI can also speed up quality assurance and perform predictive system maintenance analysis to optimize the entire software development life cycle and improve uptime.
6. Reduce security risks
While AI allows threat actors to mount more sophisticated attacks, it also allows defenders to strengthen their security. Teams can use AI to automate threat detection and incident response, perform risk assessments, and improve security compliance.
7. Unify business analytics and data management
AI systems can automate everything from data cleaning and validation to data visualization and labeling. Data and business analysts can use AI to improve data visibility, identify patterns faster, predict trends across business functions, and even perform financial data analysis. This leads to more informed decisions that impact your organization’s bottom line.
What work cannot be replaced by AI?
AI can’t replace human intelligence. It won’t be effective for work that requires skills like creativity, complex problem-solving, and empathy. The best applications of AI happen when it’s used as a tool to augment human intelligence—not replace it.
Drive value with AI and any emerging technologies by building AI skills and soft skills in your org with Pluralsight Skills.
