Companies Using AI Are 30% More Productive. Here’s How You Can Be Too

The AI-Led Efficiencies That Save Time And Facilitate Growth

Accenture recently researched productivity increases of professionals utilising AI across all their tasks and found a 30% increase in productivity.

AI is also expected to facilitate a 37% cost reduction for businesses using it effectively.

Less than two years into the broad availability of generative AI, effectively harnessing this technology has powerful impacts on productivity.

Business Productivity In The Context Of AI

First off, what exactly do I mean by productivity?

Business productivity refers to the efficiency with which companies can convert various inputs into outputs, typically measured in terms of goods and services produced per unit of input (such as labour, equipment, and capital). In essence, it’s an indicator of how effectively a business is utilising its resources to generate output and value. High productivity means that a business is able to produce more output with the same amount of inputs or less, which is crucial for profitability, competitive advantage, and growth.

AI-led productivity specifically focuses on the integration of artificial intelligence technologies into business processes to enhance productivity. This integration can take various forms, including automation of routine tasks, data analysis and insights generation, decision support, and innovation in products and services. By leveraging AI, businesses can achieve higher efficiency, reduce human error, make more informed decisions, and free up human employees to focus on more strategic, creative, or complex tasks that AI cannot perform. AI can also provide predictive insights that help businesses anticipate market trends, customer behaviour, and operational challenges, enabling them to act proactively rather than reactively.

Make no mistake about this, acting with intention today gets you ahead. Your competitors are likely making these considerations. The AI race is on. So here’s what you can do.

Make Sure Everyone Knows The Basics

This should have been started yesterday. You’ve likely already got to this point. Make sure everyone at your organisation is thinking about how to use AI in their workflows. Bring in specialists to help educate teams. Ensure courses and educational materials are easily accessible to all employees to get to grips with the fundamentals.

Part of the beauty of generative AI is its simplicity, almost anyone can work it out pretty quickly and getting very good is a process of months rather than years. If your organisation is literally starting from zero then do this but if your employees are utilising AI across their workflows then start looking for more specialised solutions.

Find Specialist Solutions

Microsoft Co-pilot, Google Gemini and other incumbents have general AI tools that will become an extensive of the popular workspace tools you’re likely utilising already. Meanwhile thousands of startups are developing focused, specialist solutions for different business requirements. Everything from sales, marketing, hiring, operations and product solutions are all being enhanced by focused AI solutions.

The health sector is no different. The major AI focus is currently on patient-facing solutions but business productivity is also being optimised through new AI solutions.

This graphic is a great overview of where specialist AI services are being developed for healthcare.

Build Your Own Solutions With AI

Whether it is internal operational solutions or customer-facing solutions begin to actually craft this technology to your specific requirements. It will teach you a lot about how to utilise it effectively and what the limitations are that are most relevant to you. AI can’t do everything your organisation needs it to do, so work that out quickly so you can continue to optimise those areas of your business away from AI.

Create An AI Culture

You’d be amazed by the number of organisations that have shut the door on AI due to downside fears. Being cautious with privacy issues and work quality is smart but closing off AI altogether isn’t.

You want to approach it in the opposite way. Ensure the leadership team is well-informed and has an AI strategy set. Make sure this feeds down the organisation and your teams feel like going to AI is the first point of call if the workflow allows it.

Get teams to compare how they’ve been utilising AI in their workflows so everyone is learning from each other and inspiring new ideas for effective implementation.

When you’re hiring look for candidates that show competency with the technology and can even add to the team's utilisation of AI.

Understand The Costs

Platform costs, engineering costs, inference costs, fine-tuning costs, infrastructure costs, data management costs, operations costs, regulatory costs and talent costs all confine what is possible within your organisation.

There’s a lot to unpack here, I’ll give this topic a focused article soon. The take home is that in the health sector all of these costs are higher than you’d expect for reasons that ultimately come down to precision.

Be Data Driven

Constantly assess how AI is being used throughout your organisation and track successes and failures. Double down where AI is working and continue to iterate those systems for improvement.

You’ll learn just as much from the failures. Where is generative AI not working? Why hasn’t it worked? Was it a problem with the technology or the utilisation of it?

Systems Today Compound Tomorrow

Putting emphasis on AI integration into your organisation today means when the technology gets really good tomorrow you’ll have the operational systems in place to turn that 30% productivity gain into >80%.