AI and Machine Learning: Driving Business Forward, Especially in Finance and Supply Chain
The boon of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) is allowing industry leaders to drive their businesses forward by leaps and bounds. However, with these limitless possibilities, determining where to best apply these advantages remains a challenge. Most organizations would likely focus first on finance and supply chain operations, often the areas most in need of upgrading previously tedious processes and being better able to deliver exceptional service.
As for supply chain operations, siloed operation methods and obsolete platforms made many operations fragile to begin with, and the onslaught of the pandemic didn’t help. While it is important to be “risk aware,” the move now is to be more “risk sensing” using AI and machine learning. By modernizing their core and outdated processes with a robust digital platform, companies will be better able to monitor operations with new and differentiated capabilities.
For many, data plays a strong role in a resilient supply chain in part because the entire system is working with the same data. Once supply chains faltered globally, consumer tolerance tanked during the pandemic. But with the right volumes of data informing the right processes, companies better adapt and respond.
However, organizations cannot respond to processes that were built years ago with a “built to last” mentality. The key to a resilient supply chain comes back to modernization. With changes in technology happening yearly, if not monthly, businesses need to adapt quickly.
The Evolution of Data Handling
Gone are the days of having to comb through binders of spreadsheets, charts, and mountains of data that took too long to compile by too few people. With data being more democratized, information is readily available. It is now more about standardizing and automating reporting, so it is flexible and user-friendly.
Machine learning can predict trends and propose results that used to require a human to do. Employing that kind of interactivity and flexibility will be a very powerful tool in keeping up with the fast-changing processes in technology and business.
However, it is important to stay focused on “storytelling” with data (transforming data into a narrative that communicates insights and influences decisions), rather than getting bogged down in static, predefined reports and deep dive features.
As newer companies use Edge cloud platforms built by AI and machine learning technologies, Edge innovations are becoming the standard in today’s business environment. Thanks to innovations spurred by AI and machine learning, Edge is fast becoming the new Core.