AI, ML Mission-Critical To Business Strategy: Survey

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Sixty-five per cent of IT decision-makers at retail companies said artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are technologies that are most mission-critical to their business strategy, said a new survey sponsored by Rackspace Technology.

With AI/ML technologies, there is an opportunity to enhance customer experiences, improve revenue growth potential, undertake rapid innovation and create smart operations- all of which can help businesses to stand out from the competition.

Key findings from the research include:

• 58 per cent of respondents in the retail space said AI/ML technologies are a high priority for their industry.
• 69 per cent reported AI/ML had had a positive impact on brand awareness and brand reputation (67 per cent), as well as on revenue generation (72 per cent) and expense reduction (72 per cent).
• 75 per centof respondents in retail say they are employing AI/ML as part of their business strategy, IT strategy or both.
• While 68 per cent of retail respondents are allocating between 6% and 10% of their budget to AI/ML projects.
• The technology is being used by retailers in an increasingly wide variety of contexts, including improving the speed and efficiency of processes (47 per cent), personalising content and understanding customers (43 per cent), increasing revenue (41 per cent), gaining a competitive edge (42 per cent) and predicting performance (32 per cent), and understanding marketing effectiveness (42 per cent)
• In an indication of the increasing maturity of the technologies, 66 per cent of retail respondents said their AI/ML projects have gone past the experimentation stage and are now either in the “optimising/innovating” or “formalising” states of implementation

There are, however challenges when it comes to AI/ML adoption.  34 per cent of retail respondents cite difficulties aligning AI/ML strategies to the business.

From a talent perspective, more than half, 61 per cent of retail respondents said they have necessary AI/ML skills within their organisation.

At the same time, more than half of all respondents say that bolstering internal skills/hired talent and improving both internal and external training are on their agenda.