The age of AI is upon us, and businesses that want to succeed need to operate in a boundless manner. This means transcending traditional limits and generating value for customers, business partners, and communities, as well as for themselves and their employees. Being a boundless company means harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI), which is essential in today’s AI-driven business landscape.
The State of IT 2023 Report by Salesforce found that generative AI has gone mainstream, with 86% of IT leaders believing it will play a prominent role in their organizations in the near future. Moreover, global AI spending increased by 26.9% in 2023, and adoption of AI had risen by 88% between 2020 and 2022.
AI is seen as a key driver of productivity, with the potential to save marketers the equivalent of more than a month per year. It is also expected to boost productivity and creative problem-solving activities in the enterprise by 50%. However, a strong data foundation is needed to fuel AI adoption and benefits. Every AI project begins as a data project, and organizations need to connect, organize, and harmonize their data to meet the needs of their customers with AI-powered solutions.
The road to data and AI success is winding, with the top priorities for analytics and IT leaders being to improve data quality, strengthen security and compliance, build AI capabilities, improve company-wide data literacy, and modernize tools and technologies. Businesses need to ensure data quality by integrating systems, accessing all data, scaling how they action the data, and ‘datafying’ all stakeholder interactions. Implementing end-to-end business processes and systems that support them, standardizing and simplifying everything, and changing incentive programs to reward flow rates and quality outcomes are also essential.
Businesses that focus on using trusted data are well positioned to compete in today’s experience-led economy. While concerns about data security, ethics, and bias remain, organizations that infuse SUDA thinking and practices at every level will be able to thrive in the hyper-connected, hyper-personalized, mobile-first economy of the future.
