Understanding AI for enterprises

Enterprise AI is a type of software that uses machine learning, natural language processing and artificial intelligence to help businesses develop more efficient, optimized operations. These tools analyze vast amounts of company data and return insights that can help you:

• Automate workflows

• Streamline processes

• Increase productivity

• Reduce waste

• Identify opportunities for growth

• Refine forecasting

• Improve decision-making

Enterprise AI differs from standard AI in both scale and complexity. Many commercially available AI tools can easily handle a small, tightly defined set of tasks, but enterprise systems can be deployed across a large company with many data sources and a wide range of moving parts. They often connect to other enterprise tools, including enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.

Examples of enterprise AI tools

Every business has a different set of needs. In response, software developers are building tools to suit small and medium businesses, multinational corporations and everything in between.

• Amazon Web Services (AWS). With its robust set of AI tools, AWS is designed to improve value for your business. It comes with content creation, virtual assistance, natural language search, code generation process optimization and more.

• IBM Watson. The powerful IBM Watson platform handles a huge range of tasks, including building generative AI models, analyzing enterprise data, creating customer care chatbots, generating code and automating workflows.

• Infor Industry AI. Infor is an AI for enterprise solution that’s accessible to a range of businesses. It can help you manage employees, improve your pricing strategy, enhance customer service, cut costs and improve forecasting.

Applications of enterprise AI

Enterprise AI has applications in nearly every department and function of your business. Before you invest, it’s important to understand how the tools could change the way you work.

1. Decision-making

Enterprise AI tools often pull data from sources across the business, making metrics more visible to all stakeholders, company leaders, managers and individual employees. These analytics can highlight relevant trends and insights to help you make informed decisions about your business.

2. Workflow automation

Automation is one of the most powerful applications of AI for enterprises. These tools identify and automate repetitive tasks, which frees employees to spend time on higher-value tasks. Less manual intervention also reduces the risk of human error.  You can also deploy automation within and between teams to improve collaboration and reduce bottlenecks.

3. Sales and marketing

Enterprise AI tools can spot behavioral trends based on past customer data. These insights enable your sales and marketing teams to tailor their pitches and campaigns to individual audience segments—and use their budgets in a way that maximizes return on investment (ROI). 

4. Inventory management

When deployed effectively, AI can help you build a more efficient inventory management system by analyzing past sales data to forecast demand, predicting future sales volumes and recommending an appropriate ordering strategy. It’s an effective way to reduce overstock, unnecessary spending and storage costs and ensure a steady supply.

5. Supply chain management

Enterprise AI shines when it comes to supply chain management—it’s capable of taking in volumes of data from manufacturers, distributors, shipping partners and logistics companies. It can track goods, predict delivery dates, recommend routes and optimize fulfillment. If there’s a delay at any point in the chain, AI can predict downstream effects and enable you to respond quickly.

6. Customer service

You’ve probably seen chatbots that answer questions and help customers find the solutions. That’s one aspect of AI in customer service—train chatbot and customer service tools on your company’s materials, and they can answer customers’ questions quickly and accurately. If an AI service agent is unable to assist, it can automatically reroute the inquiry to a human agent. This process saves time and provides a personalized experience.

7. Human resources

Enterprise AI has interesting applications in HR. It can analyze hiring data to identify the applicant sources that result in the most hires and can report on key performance metrics, such as average time to hire or the turnover rate for new employees. Some tools can examine employee data to identify factors that impact productivity, analyze performance and suggest individualized training topics.

What does it take to add enterprise AI?

Given the scope and power of AI for enterprises, it’s no surprise that adding it to your operations can be costly and time-consuming. Before you embark on the process, take time to understand what it involves.

1. Set your objectives. Why do you want to implement AI in your enterprise? What are you hoping to achieve? Define your goals upfront, and you can use them to build a process tailored to your company’s needs.

2. Choose the right tool. It’s important to invest as much time as possible into this process, as it can determine the success or failure of your enterprise AI initiative. The tool should suit your company’s budget, future growth goals and data sources. Look for software that connects seamlessly to your existing business systems out of the box. Don’t forget about usability—the tool’s interface should be accessible for the people who will use it most.

3. Develop an implementation strategy. Once you have a tool, determine what it will take to get it up and running. You might need to hire an AI specialist to help with this process, particularly if you intend the AI software to be deeply embedded into the company’s operations.

4. Identify data sources. AI depends on high-quality data. Identify your company’s data sources, and build an extract, transform, load (ETL) process to convert all incoming data into a consistent, usable format. Establish practices for data compliance and governance.

5. Customize the AI. To work effectively, AI tools must be trained on your company’s data, materials and goals. This process typically requires high-level expertise and support.

6. Train your team. An enterprise AI tool is most effective when employees use it regularly and confidently. Invest in thorough training to help each team learn to use the software in a way that improves efficiency and productivity.

7. Deploy the AI. When your infrastructure and employees are fully prepared, you can deploy the enterprise AI.

Like any technology solution, enterprise AI requires regular upkeep. By monitoring data quality and adding new data sources regularly, you can build a system that adds value over the long term.

FAQs about AI for enterprises

What is an AI strategy for the enterprise?

An AI strategy helps a company implement enterprise effectively and use it to achieve specific business goals. Your strategy should include a plan for setting up AI, training it for your company’s objectives, training employees to use it and integrating it into a wide range of workflows.

How much does enterprise AI cost?

The pricing for enterprise AI varies dramatically, depending on the tool you choose, the size of your company and the specific demands for training, modeling and security. The more custom the solution, the more expensive it will be. Expect to spend money on the software itself, AI engineer support, employee training, customer support and a temporary loss in productivity as the team gets up to speed.