News companies should focus their AI strategy on big impact

By Sonali Verma

INMA

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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Like everyone else in this digital era, you now probably have many GenAI projects on the boil. How can you make sure your AI strategy makes a substantial impact on your business outcomes?

Tight focus

Focus on a small set of AI initiatives, rather than going for breadth, and on reshaping key functions and creating new offerings, according to the Boston Consulting Group.

Slide from Boston Consulting Group report.
Slide from Boston Consulting Group report.

“Top-performing organisations follow the 10-20-70 principle. They dedicate 10% of their efforts to algorithms; 20% to data and technology; and 70% to people, processes, and cultural transformation,” the group wrote in a report.

Slide from Boston Consulting Group report.
Slide from Boston Consulting Group report.

High-impact problems

Consulting firm Arthur D. Little has similar, complementary advice: Organisations need to remain focused on solving specific high-impact problems, not just deploying AI. 

“This means that strategic prioritisation is key, identifying where the trade-offs between data availability, AI tool capabilities and solution impact are most favourable. Make, buy, or fine-tune decisions are important — in fact, most core research, development, and innovation problems lend themselves well to fine-tuning existing open source models.” 

6 key steps

The critical GenAI uncertainties businesses face are those surrounding performance, trust, and affordability, the firm says. And so, businesses need to take six steps:

  1. Mutualise compute power with partners to increase its affordability.

  2. Encourage internal and external data sharing.

  3. Better manage AI talent.

  4. Train workforces in AI fundamentals.

  5. Reset data and AI governance approaches.

  6. Improve output controls over AI-generated content. 

Hyper-personalisation

Where should one focus? On hyper-personalisation, according to the IBM Institute for Business Value.

GenAI makes it possible to develop dynamic products and hyper-personalised experiences that can quickly adapt to shifting customer demands and rapidly validate changes with customers. 

“Given these game-changing capabilities, it’s not surprising that 86% of executives say GenAI is now a critical part of digital product design and development,” the institute wrote in a report titled The CEO’s Guide to Generative AI, which was released in Davos.

The way to capitalise on this ability is to redesign product development to derive high-value product insights from every customer interaction. Teams using GenAI can now conceptualise and evaluate new products in minutes, rather than days, IBM pointed out.

The hyper-personalised journeys created by GenAI could transform how companies connect with customers and employees. For example, a company can use GenAI to rapidly analyse their own customer data — as well as data from social sources and partner organisations  — to determine which customers are most likely to take various actions, from subscribing to attending an event to buying a product off the site.

GenAI can then help the company achieve true one-to-one marketing with a personalised strategy and automated, point-in-time customised offers, translated into the customer’s preferred language.

CEO priority

Another area of focus: “Customer service has leapfrogged other functions to become CEOs’ No. 1 generative AI priority. In early 2023, CEOs told us research, innovation, marketing, and risk compliance were the most immediate and valuable use cases for GenAI. Just months later, customer service jumped to the top of the GenAI implementation list, cited by more CEOs than any other organisational function or service. 

“This makes sense as GenAI is the next logical step for companies that have already been using traditional AI in customer service for years. In fact, 67% of these organisations have already deployed GenAI in conjunction with traditional AI in customer service. By creating dynamic, personalised experiences for both customers and human agents, this approach has the potential to spur a seismic shift in productivity and effectiveness.

“Customers want personalised answers, fast and without hassle, which means AI-powered customer service assistants are not only useful; they’re essential. But executives were particularly interested in using GenAI to assist human agents” rather than replace them — 67% were deploying GenAI for agent training, and 68% were enabling agents to interact directly with GenAI to deliver improved instant assistance.

About Sonali Verma

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