4 Reasons CIOS should be thinking of AI now

Hailed as the Intelligent Design of our generation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been part of our daily lives for a while now.

To satisfy consumers, AI is now smarter. This only furthers the demand for more savvy products to be available at our fingertips. There are 4 big areas that CIOs should be considering when deciding whether to employ AI into their company’s strategy. We’re going to dive head first into them here.

1. Grow customer base with predictive analytics

Every business is concerned with getting new leads. Leads equal prospects and prospects equal customers and customers equal money. Without them, getting to the money part becomes increasingly difficult. What if there was a way for machines to analyze data which could predict a list of consumers who might be interested in the services you offer? You'd prefer that to hiring a team of people who have to guess at this list, right? With AI, better, clearer analytics are provided in the blink of an eye, verses labor-intensive data-curation lists which may not have the most up-to-date information. Only machines perform ultra high-speed data crunching. So, there’s no chance someone’s job will be in danger. By implementing machine-learning, your employees will be able to work smarter. You’ll have more chances of making a sale or closing a deal.  Furthermore, your customer base will expand exponentially.

2. Educate consumers to not fear AI

It’s true. There’s a lot of fear associated with AI. Maybe because there are one too many sci-fi novels by Asimov that detail robotic revolutions, but there are noticeable hesitations for end users to interact with AI.
We know as industry-thought-leaders that the noise surrounding AI is just that: noise. People talk about the comparisons between human and artificial intelligence, but the apprehension is misplaced.
As a CIO, part of your job is to educate your employees. Furthermore, educating your consumers about the realities of Artificial Intelligence is important too. The benefits are only continuing to grow. It’s time to get on board with learning how to make it work for you, not against you.

3. Keep your employees happy

Ask any of your employees if they ever use Siri, Alexa, or Google Home and you’ll probably get a resounding ‘yes’. As people continue implementing these forms of AI into their home lives, they expect a similar situation in their workplace, too.
Whether it’s an HR related issue such as employee benefits or the company’s HR policy, or getting a simple answer from the IT team, AI promotes easy, stress-free interactions within the organization.

4. Increase productivity

You know what they say, “happy people are productive people". With happy employees, productivity inevitably soars. As AI features are implemented within your business strategy, things that were once human behaviors are now automated. This leaves your employees to focus on other projects or get creative with new ones. Working alongside, instead of against AI and automation tools, will increase your employee’s productivity. This, of course, increases your sales. The circle goes around and around.
For example, we’re using AI in our Catalog curation process. Our catalog contains information used in Asset Management and Security for hardware and software. We can then use the team we that previously did the boring, repetitive manual curation work to provide quality testing and to deal with the “out-of-bounds” scenarios which are more complex – providing the team with some challenge, making them happier and FAR more productive. Good for the employee, good for the business, great for our customers.