How will enterprise AI shape the digital transformation journey

Introduction

With each passing year, the role of artificial intelligence for enterprise applications is seeing an upsurge. With the advancement of existing technologies and the emergence of new and innovative AI applications and platforms, enterprise AI is shaping the future of businesses, by not only impacting the functioning of business processes and outcomes but also the lives of individual employees in terms of roles and responsibilities. 

Valued at USD 1843.69 million in 2018, the Enterprise AI market is expected to rise up to USD 22889.32 million by 2024, at a CAGR of 52.17 %, during the forecast period (2020 – 2025). Top Enterprise AI companies are experiencing improvement in their operational efficiency at a reduced cost through automation and AI, accelerating their digital transformation journey.

The rise of enterprise AI

Digitization has no doubt become the new mantra of success amongst enterprises, characterized by the combination of human and digital efforts significantly impacting the growth of businesses across industries. In the year 2020, more and more businesses will adopt enterprise AI solutions such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, intelligent robots, ubiquitous, mobile supercomputing, information management, and analytics.

Artificial Intelligence for Enterprise Applications will see an upward trend as enterprises see an improvement in customer experience with the help of chatbots. Equipped to handle simple requests and resolve customer issues at a call center, these virtual agents are helping reduce production costs in terms of human resources employed and also reduced the Average Handling Time thereby enhancing the customer service at no extra cost. Enterprises are also slowly shifting to AI platforms that leverage capabilities such as natural language processing to perform various data extraction tasks such as extracting information, automating summarization, machine translation, among others. This includes the use of ai for document analysis and ai for IT ops. However, the adoption has been at a much slower rate than expected. 

In 2020, this trend will change. Along with the adoption of AI for enterprise, we will also see enterprises striving towards human and machine collaboration from planning to end customer satisfaction. Two significant developments that will ensure more enterprises take to ai are explainability and the human-machine collaboration. 

• Explainability of ai – In 2019, the term ‘black box’ became synonymous with AI with enterprises stepping back in their implementation and investment. Though enterprises continue to explore possibilities of AI, they are not very sure as to how AI comes to conclusions and makes decisions. But as companies continue to work towards making AI more transparent and explainable, 2020 will see ai vendors making greater attempts to make AI easier to adopt. This trend will continue to make AI more adaptable and flexible.
• Human and machine collaboration – From automating repetitive processes to making automation intelligent, we have indeed come a long way. But there are still areas where machines contribute only up to 20%. This is where we are seeing an opportunity and progress in 2020. The year 2019 started a trend of human and machine collaboration and it is making great strides in 2020 as well. As AI needs feedback for learning, the more data we feed into the systems as feedback, it will be able to make more human-like decisions. As more and more feedback is fed into the systems, it will create a human-like pattern, helping machines become smarter and automate more human tasks that what it is doing today. Not only will this help make an appropriate decision, but also accelerate the decision-making process.

What’s next for enterprise AI

As the adoption and implementation of AI in enterprises increased, it also unleashed a range of ethical issues. The year 2019 saw agencies and educational institutions working towards alleviating these challenges and have set frameworks to follow the same. In 2020 and the coming years, we will see C-suite executives collaborate with data scientists and policymakers to create standards of ethical AI usage in organizations. This will help in implementing AI across verticals, industries, and geographies in a standard format, ensuring ethical practices. We will also see AI vendors and consultancies work towards serving their clients with open-source algorithms helping them attain and retain ethical practices

AI in social sectors: From automating basic rule-based processes to understanding and analyzing consumer behavior, AI was always considered a business tool. We are all aware of AI’s potential with business process changes, but slowly ai is also being used by non-profit enterprises and in social sectors, where required. Policymakers are relying upon AI to keep a tab on climatic changes, natural disasters, and even everyday law enforcement activities.

Conclusion

As enterprise AI takes center stage, many possibilities are coming to light. As AI accelerates the digital transformation of enterprises on one side, its capabilities such as Machine Learning and Deep Learning are no stone unturned in providing valuable insights enabling enterprises to make informed decisions on time. 2020 will see a natural progression from intelligent automation to human-machine collaboration and as the year progresses, enterprise ai will continue to surprise us with its power to enable and empower.