What every CEO needs to know about AI. Part two: returns

Securing a healthy return on capital while driving growth is a key challenge for all business leaders. Cutting costs provides an obvious route to achieving this aim. But improvements in operating profit need to be smart and sticky to be sustainable and yield long-term growth. AI can provide a range of ways to increase productivity, improve forecasting, cut downtime and plug costly leakages across production, supply chain, procurement, customer care and administrative overheads.

Service companies: improving efficiency

Software robots from the likes of Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, Pega and UiPath perform routine tasks such as accessing applications, data entry and calculations. They mimic activities done by humans, so legacy IT systems do not need to be changed.

Many companies have installed software robots to achieve quick savings. But in many cases, benefits have proved elusive. Organisations are structured around processes rather than tasks, and those processes are spread far and wide: they are fragmented. Hence organisations face the challenge of translating the automation of tasks into savings.

The companies that have succeeded in capturing the full potential of AI technologies have taken a holistic approach rather than pursuing robotics alone. They have reimagined processes and organisational structure and deployed a variety of technologies such as machine learning and cognitive applications in addition to robotics in an integrated way. For these companies, applying AI technologies alongside process streamlining and digitisation has brought big savings – sometimes as great as 30–70%. Savings of this size have even made it possible to move some activities back from offshore locations. And faster processes have improved the customer experience.