4 minute read 7 Feb 2024
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How GenAI strategy can transform innovation

Khalid Khan
By Khalid Khan

EY Americas Strategy and Transactions AI Leader

Harnesses the power of data and mathematics to drive purpose-led, sustainable transformation for clients. Avid traveler. Proud father.

4 minute read 7 Feb 2024
Related topics Strategy by EY-Parthenon AI
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A transformative GenAI strategy connects generative AI use cases with the profit and loss statement and proprietary data.

In brief 

  • Generative AI (GenAI) use cases should incorporate proprietary intellectual property, financial, operations, and knowledge management systems.
  • GenAI strategy and investment, as part of a broader approach to artificial intelligence (AI), can have transformative results when tied to financial outcomes. 
  • Better customer engagement and new product development can result from GenAI applications.

As companies seek growth in revenue and profitability, generative AI (GenAI) strategy can be a source of transformative outcomes.

Meaningful GenAI can extend far beyond driving efficiency and effectiveness. Its ability to create, simulate and understand complex data makes it a transformative force in enterprise innovation.

GenAI can help leaders reimagine their business model to secure revenue and growth advantages by helping to create innovative new products. It can also help redesign how these products get to market, speeding up commercialization. But as companies embark on an artificial intelligence (AI) strategy, it is necessary to intentionally link each use case directly to the profit and loss (P&L) statement. While the temptation is to anchor any initial GenAI strategy in the obvious and beneficial productivity impact it can have, this won’t be enough to foster differentiation, develop smart operations or create innovative products and services. The place to start for business leaders is in house by identifying and prioritizing use cases that uniquely leverage the organization’s intellectual property, financial, operations, and knowledge management systems, taking advantage of both qualitative and quantitative data. With these assets, leaders can customize foundational GenAI large language models (LLMs) to create new apps that foster a competitive advantage.

How EY-Parthenon can help

Strategy consulting

EY-Parthenon professionals recognize that CEOs and business leaders are tasked with achieving maximum value for their organizations’ stakeholders in this transformative age. We challenge assumptions to design and deliver strategies that help improve profitability and long-term value.

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Here are three use cases that can lead to value creation

  • Better customer engagement and sales through GenAI-enabled marketing

    The problem

    Traditional marketing methods are not able to comprehensively process and draw conclusions from all the data available and can miss trends in customer clusters. The result is broad, ineffective one-size fits-all outreach.

    The solution

    GenAI can process unstructured and fragmented data and empower marketers to develop more nuanced marketing strategies, including personalized messages, product recommendations, pricing, incentives, and other content that may resonate, incentivize loyalty and result in purchases. GenAI can reveal new areas of demand and enable brands to develop unique personality and likeability.

    The impact

    While marketing automation has advanced, a GenAI marketing campaign can help target customers better and create content at a lower cost. More broadly, because GenAI can help advance understanding of customer intent, it can be used to increase loyalty and revenue through higher quality leads and content.

  • Better customer service delivery through GenAI strategy

    The problem

    Today’s rule-based chatbot customer service delivery is expensive and can be ineffective. The challenges in the customer journey may not be obvious from a company’s existing customer service data, while customer feedback can exist in a myriad of sources. 

    The solution

    GenAI-powered chatbots are always listening and learning the semantics of language. In addition, GenAI-powered self-service tools can more effectively address customer inquiries. By resolving customer queries at the first point of contact, GenAI-powered solutions can cut costs. Customer care agents can leverage GenAI to generate live, automated and personalized insights, including tailored follow-up messages. Agents can also seek GenAI powered coaching suggestions, helping them deliver enhanced customer experiences.

    The impact

    GenAI can help deliver concierge-level engagement for many more customers, with a lower cost than would be required for human-only, bespoke customer service.

  • Better product development

    The problem

    Traditionally, product design and development involve a lengthy iterative process, requiring multiple prototypes and revisions. 

    The solution

    A GenAI strategy can expedite this process by rapidly generating and evaluating design alternatives. GenAI models can analyze user feedback, market trends and performance data to identify areas for improvement and suggest optimized designs. Engineers can also benefit from GenAI tools that assist in coding, resulting in reduced development time. Engineers also use algorithms to enhance functional and performance testing for greater quality, as well as to automatically generate test cases and test data, improving efficiency.

    The impact

    This can help reduce research and development costs, while also powering speed-to-market of new products and features.

Having a stellar use case for GenAI is still not enough for it to deliver enterprise value from AI strategy. As companies embark specifically on a GenAI strategy, it is necessary to link the impact of each use case directly to the P&L to achieve adoption, accountability and scalability. Without this linkage, companies run the risk of investing in promising-but-isolated projects that leverage emerging tech but fail to get past proof of concept.

Archana Sarathy, Senior Manager, EY-Parthenon and Salil Fadnavis, Manager, EY-Parthenon also contributed to this article.

Summary

GenAI can help business leaders reimagine their future and take the fast-moving technology far beyond mere productivity improvements. 

But to develop a sustainable approach to value creation, GenAI strategy should be tied to the profit and loss (P&L) statement, and should harness the proprietary data that will help a business outshine its peers and competitors alike.

GenAI strategy will be unique for every business and industry; GenAI use cases may focus on customer service and engagement; marketing; and product development. Reach out to learn how we can help.

About this article

Khalid Khan
By Khalid Khan

EY Americas Strategy and Transactions AI Leader

Harnesses the power of data and mathematics to drive purpose-led, sustainable transformation for clients. Avid traveler. Proud father.

Related topics Strategy by EY-Parthenon AI
Upvote