AI has the potential to reshape organizational performance, giving businesses yet another reason to break free of legacy systems that are ill-equipped to drive insight and intelligent automation.
In fact, according to a new IDC survey sponsored by Workday, the need to leverage AI tools is driving a major push for transformation: a full 82% of technology leaders say improving their company’s finance function through digital transformation is a significant priority for the next 18 months, and 88% say the same for their organization’s planning function.
Now more than ever, technology leaders are feeling the heat from executive management to implement powerful systems that enable deeper insights and faster decision-making through better data architecture. The rise of ChatGPT and explosion of interest in AI and machine learning (ML) have added a new layer of pressure, as businesses clamor to find ways to implement these technologies to help increase automation, build efficiencies, and create value.
Specific use cases vary across industries, but all executives seek some form of increased productivity and better decision-making.
In state and local governments, for example, IDC found that 35% of respondents are considering AI to automate tedious processes such as time-tracking, expense processing, and self-reconciling accounts, while another 31% want to use it to detect anomalies in journal entries and expense reports. In professional services, meanwhile, respondents were more interested in using AI to make recommendations related to resource management, customer payment matching, and planning forecasts.
These AI goals are closely aligned with organizations’ general business transformation goals—which largely focus on agility in the face of constant change, regardless of industry.
In banking, top priorities include improving access to quality data and adapting legacy systems to comply with new regulations. Unsurprisingly, 57% of IT executives mentioned increasing efficiency and agility as a top-three priority, while 20% had it as their top priority.
Likewise, healthcare providers are seeking improvements in compliance, decision-making, and efficiency from digital transformation. This transformation will also hopefully foster productivity and improved care delivery by enabling ethical AI that can automate repetitive tasks and identify anomalies.
Similarly, hospitality IT executives are looking for ways to fight back against mounting industry challenges. As increased operational costs and labor shortages dramatically change the hospitality landscape, organizations need cloud-based systems that help them evaluate and pivot to new business models and tap into alternative revenue streams.
This holds true across retail organizations as well, where 44% of respondents said their current systems provide limited visibility into operations, creating a lack of confidence in the data used to drive decision-making.
Insurance is familiar with growing industry challenges as its business model confronts climate change. In the face of this uncertainty, IDC found that 70% of organizations express pessimism about insurance market prospects or feel unprepared for future disruptions. To respond, insurers need to digitally transform to enable easier access to data and better decisions in underwriting, policy management, and claims processing.
In the media and entertainment world, a rocky transition to digital revenue models has created a fragmented ecosystem that lacks efficient operations. Some 51% of IT leaders in these fields say they struggle with cumbersome manual processes, while 45% say they must manage fragmented systems across production, distribution, and monetization.
Meanwhile, two industries—U.S.-based government organizations and nonprofits—find themselves particularly weighed down with legacy systems that are woefully inadequate and costly. In light of these frustrations, 61% of state and local governments say they’re ready to make the investments necessary to shift to a better solution over the next 18 months, as they hope to improve user experience and data fluency while implementing AI for better decision-making.
In the nonprofit world, a whopping 88% of IT leaders report frustrations with their system’s ability to reconcile data issues, while 46% say financial information gathering and reporting is slow, according to IDC. To better deliver on their missions while retaining talent, industry leaders need to implement systems that offer a more intuitive user experience while also introducing AI-driven automation that can deliver fast and accurate financial stewardship.
AI innovation is also a critical priority among professional services firms, where organizations worry about their ability to attract and retain the right talent to serve clients in the future, as well as improving project efficiency and profitability. To address these concerns, businesses need cloud-based systems that can apply advanced AI and data analytics to drive scenario planning and improved profitability modeling, leading to better decision-making around costs, ROI, and resource utilization.