4 ways AI can help reimagine business operations to add value

But the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) is set to transform how businesses operate, enabling faster and more precise decision-making that reduces costs and improves customer satisfaction.

Too often, enterprises treat front-, mid- and back-office operations as a cost center, not a catalyst for growth. Yet AI can help integrate data, connect operations, automate tasks and generate insights, helping organizations seamlessly knit together processes to make operations more strategic and responsive to changing customer needs.

Chief information officers (CIOs) are already making their moves. In Foundry’s AI Priorities Study 2023, respondents cited productivity (48%), innovation (43%) and improving customer support (38%) as objectives driving investment in AI.

In the April 2024 EY CEO Outlook Pulse survey, 43% of respondents indicated that they’re investing in AI-driven innovation to create fundamental changes in how work is done.

“AI can be tasked with accurately interpreting impossibly large volumes of collected data, identify and solve for previously unknown causal relationships and work through thousands of scenarios within seconds to provide optimized solutions to decision-makers,” says Paul Dunn, Senior Manager, Digital Manufacturing/Advanced Manufacturing & Mobility at Ernst & Young LLP (EY US). “AI is proficient in helping to capture and expand organizational know-how and providing it to physical teams for decision-making and execution.”

So how is that working in practice?

Automotive companies are putting AI to work to reimagine assembly lines, boost quality assurance practices and improve forecasting. Food manufacturers are tapping AI to adjust production recipes on the fly to bolster output yield and enhance consumer safety. Procurement bots powered by generative AI (GenAI) are setting prices and terms for companies, enabling workers to stay focused on higher-value tasks. AI is improving sales forecasting, determining the most efficient supply chain routes and better managing inventory. AI is being used to understand and predict trends in consumer demand, giving an edge to companies that are capable of taking advantage of that information.

“The speed at which AI solutions are growing and proliferating leaves many organizations feeling like they must evolve or face new, more nimble competitors, even in markets they once dominated,” Dunn says.

Four ways to get started

The AI landscape is changing so quickly that many companies don’t know how or where to jump in. We make the following recommendations as organizations start their AI journey:

1. Take a targeted approach. Don’t chase every possible solution or aim for initiatives that are too broad. Identify specific pain points AI can address and prioritize across value, knowledge capture, innovation and potential risks. Be sure to reevaluate effectiveness at regular intervals. Use the multifaceted “minimum intelligence necessary” approach, which helps business leaders make architectural decisions efficiently and consistently.
2. Get your data in order. The quality of AI response is directly related to the reliability of data used. Invest in comprehensive infrastructure across the enterprise to maintain sufficient integrity, governance and security of data to obtain in the best outcomes.
3. Design with scalability and reuse in mind. Make a concerted effort to contextualize manufacturing equipment data and enterprise transactional data so that it can be combined and reused across initiatives. That way you’re not always reinventing the wheel.
4. Don’t overlook change management. Communication and training are central to successful AI use. “There’s a lot of fear of AI,” Dunn explains. “It’s important that employees understand that the technology is not here to replace them but rather to augment their ability to do their jobs more effectively.”

As AI’s potential comes into focus, there is no end to the possibilities of reimagining business operations. With the right partner, companies can execute on an AI vision that not only drives efficiency and productivity but also transforms operations for a new chapter of growth.