How can business leaders ready their organizations for AI? 4 keys to success

IDC estimates that companies invested $16B in generative AI solutions in 2023, and that they’ll invest $140B in 2027 — a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 70%, according to the Trends in AI for CRM research from Salesforce. Here is the executive summary of the report: 

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1. Trust is job one as customers evaluate AI. Consumers are increasingly making AI part of their everyday lives, but are approaching the technology with mixed emotions that call for a foundation of trust and transparency. Seventy-four percent of the general population is concerned about the unethical use of AI, and 63% are concerned about its biases.
2. Businesses evaluate their data foundations. AI needs great data to meet its potential. The technology’s rise is prompting companies to evaluate the quality, timeliness, and security of their data. Eighty-six percent of technical decision-makers agree that AI’s outputs are only as good as its data inputs.
3. AI use cases take shape across the enterprise. Whether generating content and communications or optimizing processes, teams are discovering the best ways to incorporate AI in the flow of their work as investments ramp up. No fewer than 92% of sales, service, marketing, or commerce teams are at least considering AI investments.
4. Workplace skills and policies are evolving for the AI era. Employees recognize the transformative impact of AI on their careers, but their employers are largely falling behind in empowering them for success. Fifty-six percent of desk workers believe generative AI will transform their roles, but only 21% say their company has provided clear policies around its use.

Here are the top 15 key findings in the AI for CRM report: 

1. The use of generative AI at work is exploding. A whopping seven in 10 Gen-Z workers use generative AI, and over six in 10 millennials (63%). And 52% of generative AI users say their use of the technology is increasing.
2. Company investments in AI will grow massively in the next five years. IDC forecasts that the revenue impact of AI-powered cloud solutions will have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20% between 2022 and 2027, and that investment by companies in generative AI solutions will have a 70% CAGR between 2023 and 2028.
3. Gen AI is quickly becoming an important tool for desk workers. Seventy-two percent of generative AI users are employed — a significantly larger portion than the US labor participation rate of 62%. And 56% of desk workers believe generative AI will transform their roles.
4. Desk worker adoption of AI accelerates. As of January 2024, one in four desk workers say they’ve tried AI tools at work — a 24% acceleration over the one in five who said the same just four months earlier.
5. Trust and relevance are key drivers of AI adoption. Eighty-eight percent of the general population is unclear on how generative AI will impact their lives.
6. Trust is key company core value. Sixty-eight percent of the general population believes advances in AI make a company’s trustworthiness more important. Generative AI’s usefulness is still unproven among the general public — a mere 10% fully trust it to help them make informed decisions.
7. Security and privacy matter to end users of AI. Sixty-four percent of the general population would try generative AI — or use it more often — if they believed it was more secure.
8. “Garbage in, garbage out” has been a longstanding mantra among data and analytics practitioners, but it’s never been more true than now in the age of large language models (LLMs), with 86% of analytics and IT leaders agreeing that AI’s outputs are only as good as its data inputs, and 87% agreeing that AI’s rise makes data management a higher priority.
9. Data strategies are rare and integration challenges exist. Fifty-three percent of workers say training AI on comprehensive customer/company data increases their trust in the technology. Data integration is a major challenge for businesses — 95% of IT leaders say integration issues impede their AI adoption.
10. Data maturity signals AI preparedness. High-maturity respondents are twice as likely as low-maturity respondents to have the high-quality data needed to use AI effectively. 
11. A growing set of data models demand maturity levels to evolve. Four out of five enterprise IT leaders with AI say they’re already using multiple models, and nearly seven in 10 (69%) expect to increase the number of models they use over the coming years.
12. AI use cases across enterprises are accelerating. Eighty-four percent of service teams expect increased AI investment over the next year. Marketers rank AI implementation as their top priority and their top challenge. AI in sales is growing fast —  40% already report using AI in sales and 79% of sales organizations expect AI implementation over the next year. Commerce professionals rank AI implementation as their top priority.
13. IT cannot keep up with AI demand usage in business. Eighty-six percent of IT leaders believe generative AI will soon have a prominent role in their organizations. Only 12% of IT leaders say their teams can support all AI-related requests they receive. Regarding job security in IT, 62% of IT leaders are concerned about the impact of AI on their careers.
14. Employee training on AI will increase over the coming years. A net gain of 11.6M jobs from AI-powered cloud solutions is expected between 2022 and 2028. The report found that today, 62% of desk workers don’t believe they have the skills to effectively and safely use generative AI, and 53% say they don’t know how to extract the most value from it.
15. AI training is falling behind adoption and usage policies are unclear. Desk workers rank company-approved tools and programs as the top factor for effective and safe use of generative AI, but only 21% say their company has provided such policies.

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Many important trends are highlighted in the Trends in AI for CRM report. How can enterprise business leaders ready their organizations for the AI revolution? Here are the four keys to enterprise AI success, according to Salesforce research.

1. Trusted enterprise-grade solutions.  Consumer-facing generative AI chatbots are great at simple tasks like creating recipes or planning trip itineraries. However, enterprise AI use cases require a deeper understanding of the job to be done. Trust is an obstacle for AI-powered automation — 56% of users find it difficult to get trusted output from generative AI.

2. A data foundation for relevant and efficient AI outputs. State of AI research found that 86% of technical decision-makers believe that AI’s outputs are only as good as its data inputs. Customers already hold vast amounts of trusted data within their CRM platforms, and with proper connections and integration solutions, companies ‌can unlock and take action on their structured and unstructured data trapped in silos around their organizations. 

3. Turnkey solutions that are easy to experiment with and fast to facilitate. More than half of employees analyzed for the Trends in AI for CRM Report say they aren’t waiting for their companies to establish rules or guidelines before trying AI tools at work. To keep up with employees’ interest and enthusiasm for using AI in the workplace, CIOs and IT decision-makers want to act swiftly. But they also want to experiment without getting locked into solutions that don’t support their business in the long term. Turnkey solutions that can be easily customized with no code or low code make it fast and easy to deploy AI without large upfront investments or burdensome maintenance costs. 

4. Choice and flexibility when choosing models. Choice is essential when considering AI models, and one size does not fit all, which is why businesses should avoid being locked into a single model provider. Four out of five enterprise IT leaders using AI within their business said they’re already using multiple models, and nearly 70% expect to increase the number of models they use over the coming years, according to the Trends in AI for CRM report. 

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To learn more about the Trends in AI for CRM, you can visit here.