AI applications in various industries.
Artificial intelligence has been implemented in businesses around the world, and while some positive results have been achieved, it has also resulted in wasted resources. At the moment, we are seeing trends that are helping business leaders implement worthwhile initiatives. The best use cases vary by industry, but there are many commonalities. Companies can benefit by looking beyond their industry or sector to see what works in other areas. Many great use cases work in other areas as well.
McKinsey recently wrote about nine different sectors to complement the article I wrote about industries and business functions. Let's extract some good ideas from this series of tasks.
Leverage AI for time-consuming tasks
One great example that McKinsey and I highlighted shows the huge benefits that can be realized right away. Our specific case is AI-powered medical scribing, but managers in other industries can also benefit from this concept. Doctors and nurses use electronic medical records to record patient visits and access information such as past visits and test results. Creating visit summaries is a time-consuming and tedious task performed by highly paid workers. AI tools can listen to conversations and create summaries in an appropriate format. (This is most effective if the doctor gets into the habit of saying the signs aloud, such as “My lungs sound good.” The doctor can then review and edit as necessary, but It usually takes a fraction of the time required to write a visit summary.
Where do you find employees spending time on tasks that AI can immediately perform? Sales reps logging calls, service technicians documenting tests, compliance officers checking documents? You may do so. McKinsey writers argue that companies should first improve existing processes and then move on to major innovations. That's good advice.
In many of these use cases, employees don't enjoy certain tasks. Doctors don't like to record patient visits, but they know they need to do so. Great salespeople take notes not because they like it, but because it's useful. As a result, companies become more efficient and employees experience greater job satisfaction.
Improving customer service with AI
Customer service representative support spans several industries studied by McKinsey. This is a massive, ubiquitous business feature that I have described as “the hangingiest, fattest fruit in the entire orchard.” Imagine a phone call to a customer service representative being eavesdropped on by an AI-enhanced system. AI can retrieve a customer's history without knowing which model the customer owns. The AI may prompt the agent with a question (“Did this issue suddenly appear or did it happen gradually?”). And when helpful, AI pulls out company policies, service manuals, and troubleshooting tips. This application is especially valuable for inexperienced personnel.
AI that edits information
Many industries require employees to gather information from multiple sources. For example, McKinsey's pharmaceutical articles discuss academic publications, databases, clinical trial data, and patent-based regulatory filings. Generative AI is great at bringing together information from different sources.
This concept can be applied to various cases. One application of his in a completely different industry was developed by WFG National Title Company (my client). Closing a real estate transaction requires the preparation of multiple documents, including a sales contract, mortgage loan, various disclosures, and title insurance. Documents are fed to the AI app. Examine them, categorize them, and check for signatures and initials. The app then routes the document to your existing system to create the final signature package. According to one study, in a typical home sale, the names and addresses of the buyer and seller are listed 80 times on various documents. The WFG president asked, “What are the chances that his name and address will be entered correctly all 80 times?” The company found that closing time was reduced by an average of 30 minutes. Multiply that time savings into thousands of closings per month.
This concept could also be applied to engineering design, real estate development applications, and financial risk assessment. You can ask AI to indicate the appropriate format for your final product and use a variety of resources to create the document. A human is required to check for mistakes, but it's easier than writing by hand.
The Energy and Materials article refers to the integration of various data about physical assets (utility systems, machinery), such as sensors, historical physical inspections, and automated image capture. Ultimately, failures can be predicted and maintenance scheduled. Looking beyond drug approval requests, there is currently a general notion that AI works well when multiple data sources need to be integrated into a single explanation or plan.
AI imaging business applications
Large-scale language models are leading to innovations in imaging, and business applications are beginning to emerge. In consumer sales, someone might take a photo of a living room and use AI to add a black leather sofa to see how it would look in that particular location. Or you can imagine your new home furnished with your own furniture. You might imagine your backyard as a maple tree growing 20 feet tall. The view from the kitchen window at 9am on a winter's day.
Retailers may record how customers walk through the store and use various displays and fixtures to visualize the path. Visualization is increasingly used in a variety of applications.
AI for consumer-based businesses
McKinsey's travel article highlighted important facts for everyone who interacts with consumers. “…every word a customer speaks. They drop digital breadcrumbs of what they like and dislike when they bounce off a dot com page while shopping. When they abandon a cart. How often do they return to search? When a user lands on a page just to see one itinerary for the day, one fare, instead of browsing for 20 minutes.” This allows the website to become a buyer. We can now serve ads to these users, but consumers themselves can also use apps to access not only their browsing history but also all of their information, including credit card statements, emails, calendar entries, and more. , better purchasing options.
Armed with this information, an AI app can design a vacation in seconds that matches my past vacations, popular price range, loyalty program, and calendar availability. Although this example is related to travel destinations, it can be applied to any purchase, from clothing to cars to furniture.
Business leaders looking for opportunities to better serve their customers at lower costs should look at a wide range of AI applications across industries and business sectors.
