Artificial intelligence: Where Swiss companies are investing
Almost three quarters of companies in Switzerland rate artificial intelligence (AI) as an important topic for the future. Around one in two companies even currently has initial practical experience and is using AI technologies in some areas. But in which areas of application do the executive floors want to invest in the next two years?
Swiss managers initially rate the automation of processes (78 percent) as the most important investment goals for the use of artificial intelligence. Equally relevant, albeit with a lower proportion of "very important" votes, managers find the goal of making employees more productive through AI. In addition, the majority of companies intend to use smart technology to improve predictive maintenance (76 percent) and to better evaluate and use customer data (76 percent).
"AI is becoming an increasingly important production tool in many business areas," says Dr. Bruno Messmer, head of digital strategy consulting at DXC in Switzerland. "Thanks to advances in pattern recognition, which is of great importance for the automatic analysis of texts and images, the technology is increasingly being used to take over work that relieves people."
Here's an example: A medium-sized lighting manufacturer receives around 50,000 requests for quotation per year - around two and a half to three million documents are submitted by customers for review. Most of these are complete construction specifications, the majority of which are not relevant for the lighting technology offer. In the past, 80 employees had to sift through the documents. Today, an AI-based software takes over this monotonous process. The AI system frees the sales force from time-consuming routine tasks. This allows salespeople to focus on what they do best - qualified human-to-human communication. In this interaction between the sales representative and the customer, for example, challenges from the field are discussed that cannot be found in any machine-readable document and from which upselling options can arise.
"The capabilities of AI systems already exceed those of humans in certain areas, so employees can be relieved of routine work and their time, energy and talents can be used for more meaningful tasks," says Bruno Messmer.
DXC Technology conducted the "Artificial Intelligence" study in September 2018 via a market research institute. In Switzerland, N=100 executives with decision-making authority in digital transformation were surveyed. Industry focus areas of the study are: Industry, Financial Services, Retail & Consumer Goods.
