Generative AI: Five ways companies in India can fully exploit its potential

Technology has emerged as a key foundation for competitive advantage, and CEOs across the world are racing to leverage data, artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud to build more resilience in their businesses and find new growth pathways while also optimizing costs.

To achieve the full potential of generative AI, data is core and companies must invest in it to reinvent every facet of their organizations. Our learning from working on generative AI has shown that companies that build a strong data foundation are better positioned to reinvent, and achieve new levels of performance to enhance productivity, innovation, experiences and decision-making.

A comparative analysis of global generative AI adoption shows that more than $10 trillion in additional economic value can be unlocked by 2038 if organizations invest in data readiness and adopt generative AI responsibly as well as at scale (industry-by-industry, value chain-by-value chain). This potential is reflected in C-suite optimism, as most (97%) believe generative AI will be transformative and that its integration has the potential to enable growth (94%).

While business leaders in India are prioritizing technology, data and AI investments—with an immediate focus on improving operational resilience—there is an opportunity for them to embrace generative AI and reinvent more strategic areas of the business. For example, consumer packaged goods companies and retail companies can use it to make hyper-personalized offerings across the value chain including product innovation, product packaging, marketing and sales. Globally, McDonald’s is leveraging generative AI to scale and unlock greater speed and efficiency for its customers and teams, while also helping reduce business disruptions.

To lead in an AI world, here are five ways for businesses to maximize gain on their AI and generative AI investments:

Lead with bold vision: To stay resilient and nimble, businesses in India need to embrace a bold vision, shifting from siloed use-cases or proofs of concepts to prioritizing capabilities across the value chain. A strategic approach can help companies unlock existing opportunities and open new value pools.

Drive continuous reinvention: Reinvention is a continuous journey and not a finite effort. Tapping into the power of new technologies requires a complete rethink of how organizations work. Transforming every aspect of the organization by using technologies such as generative AI can help businesses stay agile and achieve new performance frontiers.

Develop an AI-enabled secure digital core: Businesses also need to elevate their information technology (IT) infrastructure for the generative AI era with a strong and secure digital core that includes a modern data foundation, flexible AI architecture and AI-ready applications. This will require leaders to make informed choices on the foundation model as well as ecosystem partners and embed cyber security practices early in the lifecycle across technology.

Reinvent talent and ways of working: A recent survey shows that 42% of C-suite executives believe that skill shortage is one of the top three challenges that would hold back their organizations’ ability to respond to change. People are the key to unlocking the value of generative AI and companies need to invest as much in skilling people as in technology. Leaders must lead the change: in job redesign, task redesign and reskilling people.

Close the gap on responsible AI: To generate the right impact, companies need to adopt responsible AI principles for the design, deployment and use of AI. Qualitative and quantitative assessments can help understand risks of existing AI use cases, applications and systems.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to state that the information age is over and the race to understand human intent has begun. If 2023 was the year of learning about AI, then 2024 is when AI learns about us.

Businesses in India have the opportunity to create strategies and AI-based solutions that can erase the friction between people and technology, and thereby collectively laying the foundation for what will quite possibly be the greatest era of human creativity and productivity.

Sandeep Dutta is senior managing director and lead—India business, Accenture.