How AI is accelerating the C-Suite

Although ChatGPT put AI at the center of public consciousness in 2023, the AI industry has been a hive of innovation for a long-time. Enterprises looking to implement AI into the C-Suite face a market that is not only increasingly crowded, but rapidly evolving. And while executives may be pushing adoption for tactical, lower-level decision-making related to things like customer personalization or chatbots – there is still some skepticism about applying AI to higher-level strategic decisions.

During our recent UBS Private Company Showcase, Athena Theodorou, Managing Director, EMEA Software and HealthTech, UBS, sat down with companies whose offerings augment senior decision making – discussing the changing nature of the C-Suite, potential benefits of AI and how smaller companies can win over enterprise clients. 

The HR function is increasingly expected to drive positive change within modern enterprises. From skills development, diversity, culture and operational transformation, HR has a critical role to play in ensuring a business has the right people who are supported and engaged.

One example where AI can have a significant impact is talent lifecycle management. With AI providing hiring teams with a way to analyze large datasets, a company can create and monitor an almost real-time view of the skills profile of the organization. This can then feed into decisions regarding hiring, redeployment and development strategies. This skills-based approach allows for a more personalized candidate experience when it comes to onboarding and mentoring, helping to drive retention and reduce recruitment costs over the long-term.

At the center of the AI revolution is the ability to understand millions of data points to model the future, understand the present, and make sense of the past. For CFOs, this can allow for big-picture decisions, which traditionally were based on limited data, to be approached in a more qualitative way.

For example, it will be much simpler to link decisions taken at all levels of an organization to long-term financial performance. By being able to attribute revenue to specific outcomes, CFOs will have a much clearer picture of the way decision-making is linked. This could drive significant change in the financial planning, resource allocation and risk management capabilities of businesses in every sector.

AI has two high-level benefits for CMOs. Firstly, it removes the barriers and costs related to being able to produce high-quality content and targeted campaigns. For smaller players, the technology effectively closes the gap between ideation and execution, allowing CMOs to augment their limited internal resources. AI can also analyze customer sentiment at scale and identify the most impactful content and channels at the click of a button – further fueling agility and adaptability in the marketing function.

Secondly, by leveraging AI for data analysis and insights, CMOs can instantly see the latest trends in consumer behavior, markets and campaign performance. They can create more precise customer segments based on demographics, preferences and behavior, which can then continue to be updated in near real-time. Their ability to do so, of course, relies on the quality of the data being used. As with any function, CMOs will need to create frameworks for monitoring data quality and mitigating risks.

For CROs, the transformative moment is likely to occur when they can fully integrate AI solutions into CRMs. This enables a range of potential benefits across the sales funnel – from identifying potential customers to generating unique sales content to meet their specific needs.

As with the other C-Suite functions, the key for CROs is having access to a wider pool of data and being able to turn insight into action seamlessly. AI will allow sales-ops to leverage data analytics to gain valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences to create bespoke sales strategies. The ability to produce quality content and leverage AI algorithms in sales pipelines also removes several long-standing bottlenecks in the sales process, increasing profitability as well as personalization.

The AI market is made up of a growing number of companies, as well as a number of giants like Microsoft and Google. The challenge for newer entrants will not only be overcoming C-Suite skepticism of AI’s strategic use cases, but also being able to demonstrate value over time.

Whereas the tech giants are primarily focused on competing in the generalist AI space with solutions like Bard that aim to have an extremely broad appeal, the C-Suite need targeted solutions that solve the real, everyday problems they face. And with as little risk of hallucinations, bias or security issues as possible. This is where the C-Suite opportunity lies, and solutions that can simplify the lives of mainly non-tech users while still empowering decision-makers are likely to be the long-term winners.