The rise of artificial intelligence is often referred to as the third industrial revolution. To stay up to date, modern businesses need to create an AI strategy. The trouble is, most business owners have no idea where to begin.

In fact, many people assume that AI is basically science fiction.

These days, there are countless simple ways to improve your business with the help of AI. From utilising existing tools to automating processes, AI has massive potential to cut costs and boost revenues for your business.

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The value of AI businesses is currently exploding. Image credit: FinancesOnline.com

Today, we’re going to delve into how you can create an AI strategy to take advantage of this, especially in your sales, marketing and digital efforts.

Let’s start with the basics.

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What is an AI Strategy?

An AI strategy involves utilising artificial intelligence to benefit your business. In other words, it is how AI impacts the development and maintenance of strategy in a company or industry. This cuts across just about every possible business function.

However, due to AI strategy being unfamiliar territory, many ethical and moral issues have arisen. The main objective of any AI strategy is to combine humans and machines to achieve maximum efficiency and effectiveness in the workplace.

However, many software experts claim that businesses should not jump ahead into AI right away. Because it is a huge commitment and a new area of work, many companies should take a calculated approach and figure out whether AI strategy is the right next step for them.

A company must consider the risk they are taking with this strategy. They should also consider if they have the right risk management plan to accompany it. It will also require a lot of work to ensure maximum results.

At least, it would if you wanted to build and develop your own artificial intelligence. However there are a number of off-the-shelf solutions which can bring an element of AI to various tasks, such as email marketing, workforce management, and even writing.

Latest Statistics on AI Adoption/Implementation Growth and Market Size

AI adoption is booming across industries, with the market expected to reach staggering heights by 2025. Here are some key statistics to paint a picture of this exciting trend:

Growth:

  • Global AI market size: Estimated at over $136 billion in 2023, with a projected 13x increase over the next 7 years.
  • CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate): 38.1% between 2022 and 2030, indicating rapid acceleration.
  • US AI market: Forecast to reach $299.64 billion by 2026.
  • Year-over-year growth: Expected to be at least 120% in 2023 and beyond.
  • Business adoption: 83% of companies claim AI is a top priority in their plans.

Industry Adoption:

  • Healthcare: Leading the way with the highest adoption rate, driven by applications in diagnosis, drug discovery, and personalized medicine.
  • Finance: Embracing AI for fraud detection, risk management, and personalized financial services.
  • Manufacturing: Utilizing AI for predictive maintenance, automated production lines, and optimized supply chains.
  • Retail: Leveraging AI for personalized recommendations, dynamic pricing, and customer service chatbots.
  • Other industries: AI is making inroads in transportation, logistics, education, and many more.

Market Size:

  • Global AI market by 2025: Predictions range from $308 billion to $118.6 billion, all signifying significant growth.
  • By 2030: Estimates reach $1.85 trillion, showcasing the immense potential of AI.
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How AI Strategy Works: How to Develop Artificial Intelligence

You might be surprised to learn that the most common AI strategy is the use of chat-bots for customer service. Generally, this involves using inexpensive pre-built tools. At most, this requires a small amount of customisation to suit your brand.

This speaks to a crucial point.

That is, that there are plenty of tools out there which make AI accessible to just about anyone, with very little cost or effort. This is a massive change from even a few years ago, when AI was the reserve of brands with massive marketing budgets.

An AI strategy gives digital marketing departments less cause for guesswork and more room for analytical facts. In digital marketing, the team has the task of understanding their audience and their reactions to a campaign through research and hard data.

AI gives marketers the ability to analyse and predict future objectives behaviour from the audience based on statistical reports and patterns of behaviour.

Most companies who have used and integrated AI strategy into their business have the same objective. They have a specific problem that they need to solve and they are using artificial intelligence to do it.

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Unveiling AI Possibilities: Transforming Core Business Functions with Artificial Intelligence

The buzz around AI is deafening, but for many businesses, the question remains: where do we start? It’s not just about implementing the latest tech; it’s about aligning AI with your core business functions to unlock exponential growth. Let’s delve into the exciting possibilities AI presents for:

1. Sales:

  • Hyper-personalized outreach: AI can analyze customer data to identify ideal leads, predict buying patterns, and personalize outreach with laser-sharp accuracy. Imagine chatbots crafting emails tailored to each prospect’s pain points, or sales reps equipped with insights to guide every conversation.
  • Intelligent lead scoring and qualification: Move beyond gut feeling and guesswork. AI can analyze interactions, social media, and purchase history to accurately score leads, prioritizing your efforts on the most promising prospects. No more chasing dead ends!
  • Predictive pricing and dynamic offers: Optimize pricing strategies in real-time based on market trends, competitor analysis, and customer behavior. AI can suggest personalized offers and discounts, maximizing revenue and conversion rates.

2. Marketing:

  • Content creation at lightning speed: Forget writer’s block. AI can generate engaging blog posts, website copy, and social media content, freeing up your team to focus on strategy and analysis. Personalized ad copy and product descriptions tailored to specific audience segments further boost engagement.
  • Hyper-targeted campaigns and omnichannel optimization: Forget blasting everyone with the same message. AI can segment your audience based on demographics, interests, and online behavior, delivering highly relevant ads and marketing materials across all channels, from email to social media to in-app notifications.
  • Predictive analytics and real-time insights: AI analyzes campaign performance in real-time, identifying what’s working and what’s not. This allows you to optimize your strategies on the fly, maximizing ROI and ensuring you’re always ahead of the curve.

3. Product:

  • AI-powered innovation and development: Unleash the power of machine learning to analyze customer feedback, usage data, and market trends. This data goldmine can guide product development, predict future needs, and ensure you’re always innovating in the right direction.
  • Personalized product recommendations and dynamic pricing: Forget one-size-fits-all. AI can personalize product recommendations based on individual customer preferences and purchase history, increasing customer satisfaction and boosting sales. Dynamic pricing based on real-time demand further optimizes revenue.
  • Predictive maintenance and proactive care: Extend product lifespans and prevent costly downtime. AI can analyze sensor data and usage patterns to predict potential failures, enabling proactive maintenance and ensuring customer satisfaction.

4. Support:

  • 24/7 AI-powered chatbots: Never leave a customer stranded again. AI-powered chatbots can handle basic queries, resolve common issues, and provide instant support, freeing up your human agents for complex problems.
  • Sentiment analysis and proactive intervention: AI can analyze customer feedback and identify dissatisfaction in real-time. This allows you to proactively address issues before they escalate, maintaining positive customer relationships.
  • Personalized self-service portals: Empower your customers with AI-powered self-service portals. Chatbots can guide them through troubleshooting steps, provide personalized solutions, and ensure they always have access to the information they need.

Let’s look a little bit more carefully at how AI can benefit your business’ marketing.

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Benefits of an AI Strategy for Digital Marketing

Creating an AI strategy will benefit your marketing department and increase its efficiency in a multitude of ways.

This includes business strategy. In terms of digital marketing, this particular strategy has the capacity to track down what kind of content that consumers find most interesting and what attracts them.

Digital marketers used to use a variety of tools to find out what might impress the audience; AI strategy aids marketers to create more personalised content that will be distinguishing for every target audience.

This allows the customers the experience they will enjoy and benefit most out of.

Artificial intelligence also offers a more sophisticated digital marketing process. This means that instead of marketers guessing the needs of their audience, it’s possible to predict the audience’s reaction to campaigns based on previous behaviour.

Using an AI strategy for digital marketing does not discard the traditional process. Instead, it makes the process easier and more proficient for the department, the client and the product that is promoted.

AI strategies also allows digital marketers to establish more proficient and personalised marketing campaigns and with better distribution among a specific target audience too. By doing so, marketers can work with a broader view of the campaign.

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The vast majority of marketers say AI is revolutionising their industry. FinancesOnline.com

They won’t waste as much time in collecting data. Simply put, artificial intelligence will collect the data for marketers and allow them to apply it creatively. That is how the digital marketing department in any industry can benefit from artificial intelligence in the workplace.

In terms of digital marketing being incorporated into artificial intelligence, there are four main issues that this business strategy rectifies. This can also be applied into any other industry. These main issues are:

  • Minimising errors,
  • Minimising faults in performance,
  • Increasing productivity in workplace
  • Maximising breakthroughs in the company.

This all sounds great. However, in the interest of fairness, it’s also worth looking at the negative side of implementing an AI strategy.

Risks of Using an AI Strategy for Digital Marketing

AI is considered a cutting edge trend, but it still has its disadvantages. The disadvantages of artificial intelligence include ethical concerns, cost, and loss of control over business decisions and implementation.

Ethical concerns are crucial because artificial intelligence tends to invade the privacy of the target audience. It is quite common for companies to use artificial intelligence in an invasive way towards their clients.

This has been a more-than widespread mistake that has led to lawsuits and demolished reputations.

The second concern is cost, because AI strategy can be an expensive investment. The cost of incorporating artificial intelligence into a business is a risky endeavour. It needs a calculated approach.

Even after you implement an AI strategy, there is still plenty of room for mistakes. If the strategy malfunctions, it costs almost double the amount of money to fix it. The third concern is the implementation of AI strategy, which is a lengthy process when you don’t use an off-the-shelf solution.

The final concern is the loss of control over business decisions. AI strategy tends to give up the human aspect of decision-making. AI strategy is very technical and doesn’t allow much human instinct to come to play.

This can cause a lot of controversy in a company. This is because artificial intelligence could be implemented and eliminates the human aspect of a firm. This is especially true when AI has the potential to lead to job losses through redundancy.

How to Create a Successful AI Strategy

In order to create a successful AI strategy, you need to define the problem that you’re facing. Whether it is business strategy, information development, or customer service, artificial intelligence can solve a range of issues.

Even after you implement an AI strategy, you’ll then have to measure its success.

The first step is figuring out how AI can help ease this problem. Artificial intelligence will help fix a problem and incorporate technological progress, but the company has to define the problem’s extent.

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Creating an AI strategy is a complex multi-stakeholder process. Image credit: Kaleidico

The upper management is responsible to fully understand if AI strategy is the best implementation of problem-solving in their business.

You should decide whether or not AI strategy is the best choice for your business. After that, the next step is hiring the right people, or finding the right off-the-shelf tools.

It is crucial to find the right people to integrate AI strategy. This includes data scientists, researchers and software engineers, as well as non-tech professionals who have experience with various AI tools.

The final step is to ensure your staff understand your AI strategy and how it impacts them.

For example, the customer service department will have to learn how to use automated chat-bots as a means of interaction. They’ll also need to have a strategy for offering joined up service, including chat-bots.

Once these steps were implemented and monitored, then the integrated artificial intelligence in a company should be a success.

AI Strategy in the Business World: How is it Approached?

One of the most common uses of AI strategy in the business world is project management and maintenance. Another common use of artificial intelligence strategy is data collection and statistical analysis.

Incorporating artificial intelligence strategy into a company turns an organisation from a functional to a learning organisation.

There are four dimensions to implementing an AI strategy:

  • Plan for action,
  • Authority,
  • Infrastructure,
  • Creativity.

Each one of these aspects is a cornerstone of AI strategy and helps explain the intricacies of AI strategy. Your plans for action should be intertwined with the organisation’s business strategy and its overall objective in its industry.

Authority in AI strategy refers to the organisational structure of the company while adding the AI to the upgraded model. This means that there should be an “AI model” that will optimise the structure of your business.

Artificial intelligence needs equipment and data architecture in order to function properly. In the business world, infrastructure for AI revolves around the relevant tools that are required for it to work.

The fourth and final aspect is creativity and this consists of human labour. AI strategy requires an “all hands on deck” approach from every part of the company; this stems from the CEO all the way down.

In any company that incorporates AI strategy, leadership is necessary for the process to run smoothly and surely.

AI Strategy and its Impact

There is one area that AI strategy has made a remarkable contribution, and that is data. It has the ability to process any form of information or data and create the insights the companies need.

There are many different structures of data and AI can process all of them.

AI also helps in the decision-making process, cuts time and offers better insights. It can also give the company a considerable advantage in the marketplace, because of the information it offers.

It provides companies with relevant information about any topic they require and gives real-time insight.

Real-time insight is information being applied to the real-world. Artificial intelligence is applied to offer real-life insight in strategic plans. It is processed both within the company and with external parties.

Finally, AI strategy has been known to avoid and maintain risk that could occur in a company. Artificial intelligence also gives the organisation a considerable advantage because it can tell the company what their competitors are doing.

This gives the organisation an edge and keeps them one step ahead, due to the information that AI strategy processes.

Examples of AI Strategy Use in Companies

AI strategy has boomed in the business world for the past two years. The positive results and expansion of AI has led to many companies integrating artificial intelligence into business applications.

The most famous example is Walmart and the artificial intelligence, HANA. Walmart is one of the most successful retail corporations in the world.

HANA is an AI strategy that is specifically created for the Walmart chain, where they use it for machine learning.

HANA stores information on RAM because it allows the corporation to access more accurate data with real-time.

HANA has been used in analytics for product promotion and machine learning; machine-learning is information-driven decisions that keep the organisation better informed. This is the current alternative to informed assumptions of the future.

Other companies have used HANA as an AI strategy and they claim that their revenue has been skyrocketed. Businesses use artificial intelligence because it helps them prevent any conflict before it arises.

If there is a problem with the supplier of the company, then the AI strategy will let them know; it will even offer solutions to the problem that harmonises with their budget.

HANA and Walmart is just one of the many examples of artificial intelligence being integrated in a company.

It is also one of many instances where the organisation doesn’t regret artificial intelligence and mentioned high praises about it. HANA concentrates on the machinery, so it gives seasonal alerts on whether a piece of equipment should be fixed or upgraded.

AI in Action: Companies Driving Business Impact Across Industries

Here are some inspiring examples of companies across various industries using AI to achieve significant business impact:

1. Retail:

  • Amazon: Personalizes product recommendations and pricing using AI, leading to increased customer satisfaction and higher conversion rates. Their AI-powered delivery robots, Scout, are also reducing delivery costs.
  • Walmart: Utilizes AI for demand forecasting and inventory management, resulting in reduced stockouts and waste. Their AI-powered chatbots handle customer inquiries, improving customer service and reducing wait times.

2. Finance:

  • JPMorgan Chase: Employs AI for fraud detection and risk management, preventing billions of dollars in losses annually. Their AI-powered chatbot, COIN, assists customers with basic banking tasks, freeing up human agents for complex issues.
  • Upstart: Uses AI to assess creditworthiness more accurately, expanding access to financial services for underserved populations and increasing loan approvals.

3. Healthcare:

  • Mayo Clinic: Leverages AI for medical image analysis, helping doctors diagnose diseases faster and more accurately. Their AI-powered tool, Watson, analyzes patient data to predict potential health risks and personalize treatment plans.
  • Babylon Health: Utilizes AI-powered chatbots for virtual consultations, providing patients with convenient access to healthcare advice and reducing pressure on traditional healthcare systems.

4. Manufacturing:

  • Siemens: Uses AI for predictive maintenance in their factories, preventing equipment failures and ensuring smooth production lines. Their AI-powered robots collaborate with humans on assembly tasks, increasing efficiency and productivity.
  • Ford: Employs AI in their self-driving car development, improving safety and paving the way for autonomous vehicles.

5. Customer Service:

  • Hilton Hotels: Utilizes AI to personalize guest experiences, from room recommendations to targeted promotions. Their AI-powered chatbots answer guest queries and resolve issues efficiently, improving customer satisfaction.
  • Zendesk: Integrates AI into their customer support platform, enabling chatbots to handle routine inquiries and escalate complex issues to human agents seamlessly, improving customer service efficiency and reducing costs.

These are just a few examples, and the possibilities are endless. AI is transforming businesses across industries, driving revenue increases through improved personalization, increased conversion rates, and operational efficiency. It also leads to cost savings by automating tasks, reducing waste, and preventing errors.

FAQ Common AI strategy questions:

How long does implementation take?

AI adoption follows a maturity model. Quick wins in 6 months. Enterprise-level scale 2+ years.

What upfront costs are required?

Beyond current analytics expenses, $100K+ for specialized skills, systems integration, and pilot data requirements.

Which functions benefit most from AI?

Personalization engines in marketing and sales. Predictive operational analytics. Intelligent process automation across units.

What can undermine results?

Lack of leadership commitment. Data deficiencies. Poor change management and skill building around optimized human-AI collaboration.

How to Create an AI Strategy: Takeaways

Market dynamics increasingly pressure companies to pursue AI adoption just to keep competitive parity. But only organizations proactively reallocating resources to incubate adoption, support reskilling at scale, and re-engineer processes to leverage AI’s capabilities are realizing the accelerated performance possible.

With hype cycles giving way to reality, players focused on change management and discipline around execution reap outsized results. AI success ultimately tracks back to starting small, being obsessed with use case value, and iterating until business metrics reflect positive truths rather than aspirational productivity gains.

AI strategy brings many benefits, from saving time to improving decision making through the use of data.

However, almost every expert and data analyst in AI has suggested that before integrating this business strategy into a company, there are measures to be taken. Companies need to take a calculated approach to the integration, rather than jumping head-first.

One of the easiest ways to minimise risks while utilising AI is to use an off-the-shelf tool, which is made for a specific purpose. Examples include AIs for email marketing, social media, chat-bots and even content marketing.

AI strategy is rapidly dominating the business world, what time is the right time for your business to get ahead of this trend?

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