Is it time to start measuring the return your organisation is getting from its AI investments?

Is your business planning to start using gen-AI powered APIs, models or apps in its production environment in the new year, in a bid to boost its competitiveness? If you answered in the affirmative, you're in good company.

More than 80% of enterprises will have done so by 2026, according to Gartner – an extraordinary increase on 2023, when less than five per cent had deployed the game changing technology.

But such rapid uptake is hardly surprising, given the transformative benefits that can ensue from harnessing the power of AI. They include cost reductions, increased productivity and smarter decision making.

Some studies suggest generative AI can boost productivity by more than 40 per cent, while AI pioneer Sam Altman has put that figure at a bullish 95 per cent.

Exploring the commercial use cases for AI

While individual use cases for AI solutions are myriad, most fall into one of three categories.

The first is enhanced employee and customer experience. AI can provide businesses with unprecedented capacity to personalise interactions at every touchpoint, streamline internal processes and improve overall customer satisfaction levels.

The second is efficiency gains. Automation and AI-enabled predictive analytics make it easier to optimise workflows and slash the volume of manual activities – down to virtually zero in some instances and settings. Relieving employees of time consuming, repetitive tasks makes it possible for businesses to contain their headcounts – and HR spend – and free their employees up to focus on work that adds genuine value to the enterprise.

And the final category is improved decision making. Originally coined by British mathematician Clive Humby, the phrase 'data is the new oil' references the fact that the mountains of raw data amassed by organisations' digital systems have genuine value. AI powered data analytics make it possible to refine that data rapidly and cost effectively and extract actionable insights that can be used for commercial advantage.

Measuring what matters

However you opt to spend your AI dollars, it makes sense to measure the effectiveness of the platforms and programs you put in place – and establish the metrics you'll use before deploying them. 

Doing so will help you determine whether your investments are generating acceptable returns. Armed with those insights, your leadership team will be able to make smarter choices about the nature and scale of future AI projects.

If you've invested in systems to enhance your employee and customer experience, for example, measuring the reduction in response times and the effect on lead generation and conversion rates makes sound sense.

Should your AI deployments be designed to drive operational efficiency, you may wish to analyse improvements in employee productivity, and the speed and cost of operations.

Tools to make the task easy

Collecting and analysing data that allows you to gauge the effectiveness of your AI tools and technologies would be a time consuming and complex process, if conducted manually. The good news is, it doesn't have to be. 

Investing in an operations enablement and workforce platform will enable you to carry out in-depth data analysis, monitor your employees' productivity metrics in real time and extract insights that can inform future decision making around workplace-centric AI investments.

It's business critical technology that makes vital insights available to your leadership and ICT teams.

Staying ahead of the game in 2025 and beyond

Once the stuff of science fiction, AI has rapidly become one of the most significant mega-trends of the 2020s. The upcoming year will see an extraordinary groundswell of adoption by Australian businesses of all stripes and sizes. If yours is among them, you'll likely want to ensure you derive the optimum value from the dollars you invest in incorporating it into one or many aspects of your operations. 

Operations enablement technology makes measuring your ROI on a gamut of AI platforms and programs a straightforward matter. If you're serious about harnessing the power of AI to maximum advantage, it's technology that is well worth incorporating into your ICT stack.