Why AI doesn't have to cost your company millions

Adaptive intelligence (AI) is one of the hottest topics in business. For years, executives have been hearing all about the complex algorithms that will one day enable them to make smarter decisions across a wide range of business problems.

But for all of this buzz, the vast majority of companies have yet to realize even a little bit of AI’s potential. The reason? Implementing a custom AI solution can be both time consuming and prohibitively expensive. After all, most companies simply do not have the budget to hire a bunch of consultants and IT specialists to adapt existing AI technology to their specific business needs.

Fortunately, improved cloud technology will soon create a number of cost-effective opportunities for businesses to harness the power of AI. Even now, engineers are hard at work building out-of-the-box solutions that companies can use to perform individual business functions. In the not-too-distant future, it will be fairly easy for companies to incorporate AI into the business apps that they’re already using to manage their day-to-day operations.

“If you’re the CFO of a trucking company, you might not have $5 million or $10 million to invest up front,” said Jack Berkowitz, VP of products and data science for Oracle's Adaptive Intelligence program. “For many businesses, the true value of AI will be in reach when it doesn’t require an army of data scientists to figure out how to incorporate it into your systems and processes.”

How integrated AI drives business results

With AI automatically baked into the software a company uses to manage its finances, employees, supply chain, and external communications, the organization can benefit in a number of critical areas:

Looking ahead

What’s most exciting is that the examples listed above only scratch the surface of what businesses will one day be able to achieve with AI. In fact, when you consider all the different ways it can improve business performance, it’s no wonder why the research firm Markets and Markets has predicted that AI technology will become a $16 billion market by 2022 — up from just $420 million in 2014.

According to Berkowitz, companies across the board will integrate AI-powered apps into their businesses over the next two years. Eventually, organizations will have entire networks built on AI, enabling a company’s various departments to communicate and learn from one another in an automatic, continuous loop. Once this happens, companies will be able to develop entirely new business practices, such as dynamic discounting and borderless shipping.

Simply put, there’s no telling what businesses will be able to accomplish once they’ve implemented an integrated, automated AI solution.

“It’s fundamentally going to change the way business-to-business and electronic business is done — we’re going to see speed and trust across networks,” Berkowitz says. “That’s what’s going to happen, and it’s not 10 years away. It’s between two and five.”

Learn more about how your company can make a smart investment in AI.

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