AI integration is a hot topic. It’s been over 18 months since OpenAI released ChatGPT and AI really began exciting the business community. Many organisations have concluded pilot programmes or have been successfully using narrow-scale AI tools for some time.

That’s leaving aside the fact that a great many machine-learning powered business applications preceded the GPT watershed moment, bribing AI power into large and small enterprises.

Most organisations are clear: They want to integrate AI into their business to maximise the business benefit from efficiency and accuracy, including for reducing risk. Those that are serious about their quality of service will plan to use these new technologies to better support their staff, the ‘human-in-the-loop’. They, in turn, can pivot to using their expertise in higher value tasks where people are better suited - dealing with customers, creativity, and planning.

Here, four technology leaders at companies with a pedigree utilising AI to drive customer business results offer short tips to make AI integration a success.

• Resilience and performance: AI can strengthen your digital infrastructure - by Tim Armandpour, CTO at PagerDuty, a digital operations management company, who automates critical work with an AI-powered operations platform.

“Organisations are only as good as their digital infrastructure - the tech stack that keeps their business operations running and their people able to apply their expertise. The stack, cloud services, and software integrations all create immense and growing complexity to manage, for the business to stay running.

“To deliver always-on, responsive business services, teams need a ‘copilot’s’ support: Assistive automation capabilities that help them sort through the noise of signals generated from operations, to effectively diagnose issues quickly to take the best, prompt action. AI support in this context supports humans by reducing repetitive and time-consuming tasks, focussing attention where it matters.

“With a solid foundation of digital maturity, organisations are then able to take real strides to unlock the full potential of further AI and automation across their entire digital enterprise, for every departmental use case.”

• Integrating AI into businesses for greater trust - by Paulo Rodriguez, Head of International at Vanta, a unicorn start-up automating compliance and streamlining security reviews via its trust management platform

“Gaining and maintaining trust is the real motivator behind many security processes. Currently, the process to achieving this is arduous - with businesses spending 7.5 hours per week staying compliant. But by integrating AI tools, security and compliance teams are able to make smart decisions, faster.

“We are already seeing strong uptake in the technology - with 78% of UK business leaders using or planning to use ML/AI to detect risks against their organisation (according to our State of Trust report). But, as with all technologies, firms must monitor the use and outputs of AI solutions to avoid poor outcomes in high-risk use cases, making certain that their AI use is fair and fit for purpose.

“One practical example of this is Vanta Trust Center which enables companies to showcase their security posture. Prospects can ask questions through a conversational interface, and Vanta AI will generate answers based on the rich foundation of resources already available in the Trust Center. They can ask questions like “How does your company manage encryption?” - enabling prospects to find information easily, saving them time from having to go through all the documentation.

On the other side, administrators can see all the questions asked and answers provided so they can find trends and monitor quality. This is just one example of AI technology streamlining and empowering security and compliance processes.”

• Maximizing value from agreements: AI changes the process and outcomes - by Violeta Martin, VP, Commercial Sales EMEA at Docusign, a former technology unicorn, now public, which recently launched a new SaaS category: Intelligent Agreement Management

“When business critical information gets trapped inside flat files, unconnected to the systems of record that underpin business operations, organisations suffer from the “Agreement Trap”. It represents the greatest destruction of value in businesses today.

“Research from Deloitte and Docusign suggests that annually, nearly £1.5 trillion in global economic value is stuck in the trap. This comes as a result of outdated systems and processes that keep value locked out of decision-making. As a result, companies waste an annual average 25,000 hours per year, per function, developing agreements - with Europe taking even more time than other global regions. It also holds back agility, with companies taking an average of two weeks longer to close a big deal or hire top talent as a result.

"All that’s about to change, thanks to recent advances in AI. New models now available offer powerful tools to help businesses create smarter agreements, and actively manage them to ensure delivery of maximum value over the agreement life cycle. Of all the uses of AI, helping break businesses out of the agreement trap is one of the biggest opportunities in the history of software. This new category, Intelligent Agreement Management, will grow to be counted amongst categories like CRM, HRM, and ERP.”

• Enhancing your customer experience: AI supports your growth team - by Shaun Shirazian, CPO at Pipedrive, the unicorn provider of easy and effective sales CRM for small businesses

“Small businesses need to make rapid decisions, often without the benefit of a large team of experts supporting the process. They need more expertise and time to analyse sales data than they have available, leading to missed opportunities and inefficient processes. Small businesses are the perfect use case for integrating AI solutions into their business processes to give them a competitive edge in making smarter decisions, saving time and being more efficient.

“Taking one example - the sales journey. Sales is fast paced and relies on balanced skill sets: process orientation and creativity, empathy and guidance. With the data from sales teams tracking interactions and metrics, an AI-powered solution with predictive capabilities, can support by surfacing better sales insights and recommendations on the deals with higher potential success rates to focus on.

“Sales, and other business teams, are highly skilled. Integrating proven AI assistants boosts team efficiency - saving time, identifying patterns, and recommending smart actions to prioritise, removing admin from getting in the way of high value action.”

The right tech in the right place

The right integrations, smoothly done, can have quantifiable benefits for any business. It’s worth testing in one business area first, as the experts above suggest, and then carefully analysing and planning how learnings apply elsewhere. AI is still new, but the more contained the use-case, the higher the chance that it can be applied safely and successfully.