Johannesburg - South African companies are being urged to spend big on their Artificial Intelligence budgets in a bid to remain competitive and as a means to improve customer satisfaction.
The companies are using AI as a catalyst for customer service, communications and improving the overall consumer experience.
This is according to Amritesh Anand, the vice-president of tech multinational In2IT technologies, who believes companies who want to remain competitive in the country, must attempt to match the global speed of innovation.
“If we delay adoption of AI today, catching up will be more difficult and cumbersome as the rate of adoption and innovation today is very fast,” he warned.
A recent report titled Accenture: Artificial Intelligence is SA ready? notes that while many South African companies have begun to embrace the potential of AI, more work remains.
He believes that larger AI budgets have become a sharp point of focus, as businesses across all industries are increasing their investment in the technology to create competitive advantage.
The use of AI has been stepped up globally in recent months, driven by the UN tech agency, International Telecommunication Union, which is championing the use of the technology to hasten sustainable development.
“AI is already an attractive value differentiator between firms. In fact, our analysis shows that companies that can move from ‘observer’ status to ‘collaborative inventor’ position could see their firm’s value increase by 90% on average. That is a lot of trapped value waiting to be unleashed,” he said.
In the South African context, financial services and insurance companies are some of the early adopters of the technology, and have since deployed chatbots that are being used to answer consumers' questions regarding financial products.
In the banking sector, AI is now making decisions whether to grant a loan or finance a vehicle.
“Adoption of AI has led to massive transformation in this (financial services and insurance) industry as use cases in this industry are many. Simple automation ideas of replacing monotonous tasks by intelligent software to complete digital banks,” said Anand.
“We are witnessing an immense shift in banking and insurance industries, leading to faster product evaluation which are scientifically driven through user-based data analytics to faster operations,” he said.
In the insurance space, companies such as King Price, Pineapple and Naked Insurance are some of those who have adopted AI tools to quote a customer for insurance products, bill and sign up, without interacting with a human.
Anand predicts that in the future, even here at home, the use of AI and chatbots will boom as businesses seek to scale customer service and communications.
“Chatbots which started with simple FAQ based, have evolved over a period of time to adopt AI technology in backend.
“Today chatbots are conversational in nature, can sense the sentiments of the users through conversation, can initiate or highlight the product for up sale at appropriate time with the user and can handover the conversation to a live agent. All these are possible using AI in the backend.
“Widespread use of such chatbots are vouched for by the fact that Facebook itself has more than 300 000 live chatbots by end of 2021,” he said.
Anand believes that AI is changing the way of conducting business and urges South African business leaders to prepare for an AI-centric future.
He explains: “Business leaders must go with a business idea which is low hanging and easy to implement and prove within the organisation.
“Partnering with digital-centric IT firms can help reduce the learning curve and help with quick proof of concept which can be taken into production quickly once satisfied with proof of concept.
“Over a period of time they must create plans to have a centre of excellence, responsible of creating use cases lead by business needs, which can be integrated with various existing systems to draw out value,” he said.
On the matter of regulating AI technology, Anand said the technology was a double-edged sword, and government should consult the industries to come up with regulations to use such technology without stifling the usage right purpose and impacting the growth.
IOL