The Race to Intelligence and Why Future Revenue Streams Depend On It

By Jim Lundy

Why C-Suite Executives Need to Embrace AI as a Strategy

We have had this conversation with clients many times. The 4th Industrial Revolution is here and it is time to embrace the strategy of adding intelligence into current and future products. In 2022, the sense of urgency to embrace AI in products and services is increasing. This blog discusses just a few of the reasons why Senior Executives need to embrace AI and develop a product strategy to harness it.

Understand AI Before You Leverage It

The simplest way to describe the current situation is that if this was a car discussion we’d be discussing how things like a turbocharger lead to better car performance. 

The same thing is true with AI in that computer algorithms can understand what is happening and make suggestions or predictions to help increase performance or to Automate a process. If this premise is true – and it is – then the challenge for Executive Teams, for Product teams and for engineering teams is to design future products that add growing levels of Intelligence to the mix.

since I’ve been covering search for close to 30 years, search is a way of indexing information and so our machine learning algorithms. However, others have not had that exposure and that is why all analysts at Aragon are trained in a I and the applications that they can deliver

Intelligence is a Feature – Of Future Products

One thing is very clear that AI is here to stay and that intelligence is becoming a critical set of features that products need to have. Once teams understand what a I is and what it can do, then the work begins to develop enhanced applications that become intelligent and can both automate and predict.

Automation is one of the best ways to leverage intelligence. Today, it is possible to speak and have an application type with high degrees of accuracy. Most document editors now feature something called typeahead which is the ability to predict what you’re about to say and display those words. today most map systems and cars will automatically reroute you based on traffic patterns.

So already we see a number of examples where AI has already come into both B to B&B to see product areas. However, for many enterprises and for many product teams, the move to Intelligence is slow or nonexistent.

Future Revenue and the New Intelligence Race 

Many times we hear that AI is just a fad that it isn’t real and that it’s just marketing hype. I can tell you that that is not true. At Aragon we’ve actually been leveraging AI in areas such as CRM for several years. With a predictive CRM application, it is easier to tell where the risks in an opportunity or a forecast are because the application is constantly monitoring what is going on. 

But it also is fascinating that many customers of that CRM provider have not yet migrated to the AI version of their sales cloud, because the company is not touting that addition. This reinforces the key point that executives and product teams need to understand why intelligence is so important.

Going Beyond Analytics

In the past we used to refer to intelligence as analytics. However we’ve left that era and are now in the age of information understanding. The algorithms need to understand the context so that they can make better predictions about future actions or suggest ways to speed up a process. 

The reason I mentioned this is that many of my peers at other analyst firms are still referred to as analytics when it is much more than that. When Aragon looks at the various types of content analytics we now just refer to this area as content AI. Business leaders like that terminology because content analytics seems to be nefarious and more IT speak.

Bottom Line

Making Products and Services intelligent is the new race. Adding increasing amounts of intelligence is what is needed. Enterprises need to evaluate technology providers with this “Intelligence Lens.”

The future is here now and enterprises should talk to Aragon about the implications, both short and long term. 

 

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This was the 6th blog in the Digital Workplace blog series by Aragon Research’s CEO, Jim Lundy.

 

 

Missed the previous installments? Catch up here:

Blog 1: Introducing The Digital Workplace Weekly Blog Series

Blog 2: Application Proliferation – Building out Departmental Tech Stacks

Blog 3: Invest in Sales Coaching and Learning Now

Blog 4: The Slow Return to the Office vs the Fast Return to Events

Blog 5: The Shift to Industry Clouds is Here

Stay tuned! We publish a new blog every Thursday.