AI has been a hot trend for some time now. Like most trends not everyone is a fan at first, but as more people get on board opinions change. Trends like AI become hard to ignore as more people adopt them. If your business is wondering, how to include AI in your 2025 business strategy, here are a few ways we suggest.
- AI Strategy: Problem Solving
- AI Strategy: Creating Efficiencies
- AI Strategy: Expansion
Including AI into a business strategy can be a great way to make improvements and grow the business; if it fits into the existing strategy. However, jumping in too quickly or abandoning current business strategies to build an AI strategy is risky. It can be a huge waste of time and money. Businesses should be strategic about adopting AI to lower risks and increase positive ROI.
1. AI Strategy: Problem Solving
Including AI in a strategy can solve problems. It can be a great addition to your existing processes when it reduces errors or performs tasks more quickly. AI can stimulate creativity and offer process efficiencies. It can be an extension for an overloaded employee juggling multiple responsibilities, which most people are these days. It can automate reports, help move leads through the funnel or automate client interactions for better response times. There are now so many new tools that have entered the market there has been a drop in the Generative AI growth rate in 2024 from 2023. A trend that appears to be continuing. AI growth is still happening, just at a lower rate.
Companies are becoming more moderate in their adoption of AI. Most have figured out when you solve one problem it may create another. It’s not unheard of for new technologies to under deliver as promised or create other issues. So it’s not a good idea to use AI to fix what isn’t already broken. There is always a trickledown affect of new technology. Taking the risk makes the most sense if there is more to gain than lose.
When starting out with AI and incorporating it into your 2025 business strategy, a good use case is to solve an existing problem. Also, make sure it’s going to meet the standard of your customers and hopefully enhance the customer experience. An AI adverse customer base could benefit from a transition plan or AI options; like self checkout or wait in line for a cashier. Unexpected changes can be frustrating for a customer. A good communication plan should be a part of any AI strategy.
2. AI Strategy: Creating Efficiencies
AI can create efficiencies that frankly can’t be done faster or better than by a human. These are simple, repetitive tasks with a set of standards. Human errors can happen in highly repetitive tasks. People lose their train of thought. AI tools stay focused using data input to guide it. This creates more consistency and reduces the workload and stress for employees. It sounds a little sci-fi, but AI is already incorporated into many of our day lives with automated assistants, chatbots, online payments and smart home features. By eliminating mistakes, forgetfulness and other human errors it can make life easier.
It can also create efficiencies in the creative processes. AI tools can provide great thought starters. In some instances, AI can take original designs and apply them to multiples creative sizes and applications, a time-savings that would otherwise taken hours of repetitive work. This allows your well-paid creatives to spend more time conceptualizing and thinking of new designs and solutions. There are so many good uses and AI examples in everyday life that most companies can benefit from applying an AI strategy to create efficiencies.
3. AI Strategy: Expansion
AI is a great tool for expansion. It can be used to handle increased volume by filtering and organizing. For instance, when you hear that familiar “Hello, how can I help you today? Please press…” phone prompt that follows a series of validation questions is a resource saver. It is much more efficient than adding another headcount to filter calls. This is especially true if the information is already stored in a database – like being able to answer when a customer’s next payment is due. This sort of engagement can meet customer expectations and build brand reputation without human interaction. It frees up human resources to provide customer care and human interaction on an as needed bases for more complex issues.
With AI taking on more mundane tasks it allows employees to handle bigger issues that AI cannot. This can also increase employee satisfaction by allowing employees to focus on more meaningful work. So it allows the internal team to grow with the business and focus on more complex work.
AI can become economically beneficial and attract the best talent when businesses grow and operate at scale. Larger companies have more resources and can offer bigger opportunities. Scalable AI solutions let you start small and grow your AI capabilities with the growth of the business. Many providers offering free or low costs access to entry level AI tools for smaller and growing businesses. However, keep in mind all these cool AI tools need management to effectively use them and eventually investment. This leads to the final consideration for AI in a business strategy, which is reviewing the necessary resources.
Conclusion
In conclusion there are many ways to benefit from incorporating AI into your 2025 strategy. If you already made AI investments, it may be a good time to look at how those AI resources are being utilized and if there is a benefit to expanding upon them. Also, there may be applications that just didn’t adhere for whatever reason so they should be abandoned. Most AI tools have updates and ongoing expenses so if they are not provided the benefits as expected it’s best to pivot. AI is here to stay and will continue to grow. So getting in the game at some level makes sense. Also remain agile not getting overly tied to systems if possible. Then when new technologies become available they can be evaluated and adopted.
