Artificial Intelligence in Business (and How to Use It Effectively)

1 week ago 10 Minutes

Artificial Intelligence in Business

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping business operations, decision-making, and customer service, and impacting everything from the companies we interact with to our daily job functions. Whether you’re interacting with a company as a consumer or navigating your own day-to-day job, AI is increasingly part of the picture.

Why AI Literacy Matters in Business

As organizations adopt AI to stay competitive, employees who understand how to apply these tools effectively stand out. Knowing how to work with automation, interpret AI-powered analytics, or contribute to AI-driven strategy isn’t just an advantage anymore—it’s becoming a baseline expectation.

Whether you’re just beginning to explore AI or want to become the go-to expert in your company, building strong AI skills is essential. Employers are looking for people who can bridge the gap between technology and business outcomes.

What Does Artificial Intelligence Look Like in Business Today?

Tech companies may have been the original driver of AI; however, they no longer have exclusivity on using it in their business functions. In today’s business world, the ease of access to AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and enterprise AI platforms has made AI integral to a wide range of industries. 

The adoption of AI across businesses has been driven by increased competition, customer expectations, and the need for higher productivity. IT departments took the early lead and applied it extensively into their daily operations, and now divisions like marketing, finance, human resources, sales, operations, and customer support are all seeing benefits from AI integration. In fact, a recent McKinsey State of AI survey finds that 78% of organizations now use AI in at least one business function, up from 55% just one year earlier.

Moreover, generative AI is becoming especially common: 71% of organizations say they use gen-AI regularly in at least one function. 

And while many businesses are experimenting with just one function, the average number of business functions using AI is now three.

Well-known companies are already harnessing the power of AI to optimize their operations in ways that illustrate its diverse value:

  • Netflix uses AI-powered recommendation engines to suggest customers’ next binge session, showing how AI can dramatically improve customer engagement and personalization at scale.
  • Amazon relies on AI to manage its complex supply chain, ensuring items are in stock and arrive on time, demonstrating AI’s ability to drive efficiency and resilience in logistics.
  • Salesforce integrates AI into its customer relationship management (CRM) platform to identify stronger leads and improve tracking, highlighting AI’s role in boosting sales performance and customer insights.
  • Shopify engages customers with AI-powered chatbots and smart product tagging, enhancing their shopping experience, proving AI’s strength in elevating customer support and driving conversion.

AI is no longer just a high-tech concept; it has become a practical tool in everyday business functions.

Benefits of Artificial Intelligence in Business

When used strategically, AI delivers clear advantages across operations, workflows, and strategy.

  • Efficiency Boost – Automates repetitive tasks like data entry, scheduling, and reporting so employees can focus on creative and strategic work.
  • Smarter Decisions – Analyzes massive data sets to uncover patterns and trends, enabling more accurate, evidence-based choices.
  • Personalized Experiences – Powers chatbots, recommendation engines, and targeted content to improve customer engagement and retention.
  • Cost Savings – Streamlines operations, reduces errors, and lowers labor costs through automation.
  • Innovation & Agility – Helps companies adapt faster to market shifts and fosters long-term resilience.
  • Risk & Security Management – Continuously monitors systems to flag potential risks or security threats before they escalate.

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Different Business Sectors

Regardless of your title, department, or industry, there are valuable opportunities for AI to play a role in enhancing operations and impacting growth.

Marketing and Sales

Grab and keep your customers’ attention among the flood of content they receive. 

  • Personalized outreach: With AI, you can create personalized content, improve targeting, and increase results with lead scoring. 
  • A/B testing automation: Allows your team to optimize funnels and focus on quality leads and improving conversion rates.
  • Conversational AI: Employ AI for sales outreach and support by engaging, maintaining, and strengthening customer contacts.

Some relevant Git courses to help hone these skills include:

Operations and Analytics

Integrating AI into Operations and Analytics can streamline processes, improve efficiency, and support data-driven decisions, resulting in increased profitability and a competitive advantage.

  • Demand forecasting: AI can assess historical data, market trends, and predictive analytics to forecast future demand with high accuracy. This enables companies to better anticipate customer needs, plan production, and manage resources, leading to reduced costs and increased sales.
  • Inventory optimization: AI-driven systems can use real-time data to automatically adjust stock levels, which can minimize carrying costs and ensure the timely delivery of products to customers.
  • Process automation: Using AI agents and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to automate repetitive tasks, such as data entry, customer support, and reporting, can result in faster processes, lower operational costs, fewer errors, and improved consistency across operations.

Some relevant Git courses to help hone these skills include:

HR and People Operations

With the job market more competitive than ever, HR and People Operations professionals now have access to tools to help meet hiring goals and reduce turnover costs. 

  • Resume screening: AI can serve as the first step to getting the right employee in the door, with resume screening and candidate matching abilities. 
  • Personalized onboarding flows: New employees can follow personalized onboarding flows to stay on track and get up to speed quickly. 
  • Predictive insights: Adopt tools to help identify which candidates are likely to stay and remain engaged in their roles. 

Some relevant Git courses to help hone these skills include:

Admin & Strategy

AI can enhance administrative processes and strategic planning by gathering, analyzing, and applying organizational data.

  • Report summarization: The ability to analyze data and generate concise, accurate summaries saves time and provides the option to customize reports to meet specific user needs. 
  • Decision frameworks: AI supports decision-making by continuously analyzing real-time data from various sources, allowing leaders to base their choices on up-to-date, data-driven insights rather than outdated or incomplete information.
  • Strategic modeling: AI can simulate multiple scenarios using current and historical data, helping businesses test strategic options, forecast outcomes, and prepare for potential risks or opportunities to guide future decision making. 

Some relevant Git courses to help hone these skills include:

Customer Support & Experience

Timely responses to your customers’ needs are essential.  

  • Chatbots and virtual assistants: Assist with customer inquiries and provide ongoing support.
  • Sentiment analysis: Analyzes customer sentiment and routes issues appropriately.
  • 24/7 multilingual service at scale: Chatbots and virtual assistants allow customers access to around-the-clock multilingual services offering an immediate response to their inquiries. 

The relevant Git course to enhance this skill is:

 IT Operations and Engineering

AI technologies can play an important role in configuring solutions and optimizing operations workflows.  

  • Automation of routine tasks: Repetitive and manual tasks can be automated to improve efficiency and reduce errors. 
  • Continuous systems monitoring: Performance monitoring tools can quickly identify issues and reduce threats. 
  • Predictive automation: Provides information for proactive decision making.

Some relevant Git courses to help hone these skills include:

How to Integrate AI Into Your Business Workflow

With a constant stream of information about AI being released, knowing where to begin can feel overwhelming. However, integrating AI into your business workflow doesn’t need to be complicated.  

Begin with Low Risk, High Impact Use Cases

The key is to start simple and scale gradually. Good starting points to build AI knowledge are task-level automation or repetitive processes, like email summaries or customer FAQs. 

Good starting points include:

  • Automating routine tasks like meeting notes, email summaries, or scheduling.
  • Using chatbots or knowledge bases to handle common customer FAQs.
  • Generating first drafts of reports, proposals, or marketing copy that employees can refine.

To make adoption stick, it’s best to start with use cases directly tied to your current role or industry. For example:

  • In marketing, AI might draft campaign ideas or optimize ad spend.
  • In finance, AI could help flag unusual transactions or speed up reconciliations.
  • In HR, AI can screen resumes or summarize employee feedback.

Ask yourself: What’s one repetitive, time-consuming pain point in my daily work that AI could lighten? That’s the ideal entry point.

Use Low-Code and No-Code Tools

Several tools are available to support your AI journey, and no coding or advanced technical skills are required:

  • Microsoft Copilot – Embedded in Microsoft 365 apps to generate emails, analyze spreadsheets, and summarize documents.
  • Google Duet AI – Assists with writing, data analysis, and presentations directly within Google Workspace.
  • Zapier AI – Automates repetitive tasks and builds workflows with natural-language prompts.
  • Airtable AI – Enhances database workflows with AI-driven summaries, categorization, and content generation.
  • Notion AI – Helps brainstorm, draft, summarize, and manage projects inside Notion.
  • Coda AI – Generates content, automates docs, and provides insights across team knowledge bases.
  • HubSpot AI – Assists with lead scoring, automated outreach, and customer insights.
  • Jasper AI – Creates marketing copy, ads, and social media posts in minutes.
  • Tableau GPT – Enables natural-language queries for business intelligence dashboards.
  • ChatGPT (with plug-ins) – Can connect to your business tools to analyze data, draft responses, and support decision-making.

Prepare for Common Challenges 

Change Management

When introducing AI, applying change management techniques can help alleviate employee concerns: 

  • Communicate transparently. Be available for questions, hold team meetings, and share success stories. 
  • Emphasize skill enhancement—not job replacement.
  • Provide training and open forums for feedback.
  • Don’t expect immediate change. Give employees time to adjust and learn.

Data Privacy

As you build your team’s AI confidence, recognition of ethical use and security measures is vital. Ensure all team members are familiar with organizational policies and procedures on data privacy, security, and ethical use of AI. Provide training on regulatory compliance, particularly if you handle a large amount of data or require extra security measures.

AI Bias

AI bias occurs when algorithms produce unfair or skewed results because they reflect flaws or imbalances in the data they were trained on. Awareness of AI bias is important because it can damage trust, increase compliance risks, and reduce the effectiveness of AI solutions. To mitigate these risks, organizations should:

  • Use diverse and representative training data to avoid skewed outputs.
  • Regularly review and audit AI outputs to detect and correct bias early.
  • Maintain human oversight so decisions aren’t left entirely to algorithms.

Even small steps toward responsible AI practices help build trust and ensure solutions deliver fair, reliable results.

AI Strategy for Professionals and Leaders

Bringing AI into your organization is not just about choosing the right tools. It is about building the right approach. Here is a practical playbook for leaders:

Step 1: Decide Build vs. Buy

  • Build: Best if you need something highly tailored, have deep technical resources, and can invest for the long term.
  • Buy: Ideal for quicker wins, smaller budgets, or when proven solutions already exist.

Step 2: Align with Business Goals

Before investing, ask: How does this AI initiative move us closer to our core objectives such as revenue, efficiency, customer satisfaction, or innovation? AI should never be a side project. It should advance what matters most.

Step 3: Create the Right Culture

  • Upskill your people so they feel confident using AI, not threatened by it.
  • Encourage safe experiments by piloting AI on small tasks before scaling up.
  • Hold teams accountable with clear guidelines for responsible use.

Step 4: Integrate AI into Daily Workflows

  • Treat AI as an augmentation tool rather than a replacement for human talent.
  • Teach employees prompting and oversight skills which are becoming as essential as email or spreadsheets.
  • Identify AI champions within teams who can share tips, successes, and lessons learned.

Step 5: Lead by Example

When leaders use AI themselves to summarize reports, test pilots, and ask smarter questions, it signals that AI is not a passing trend but a core part of how the business operates.

Learn to Use AI with Git

AI is evolving quickly, and keeping up can feel overwhelming. Whether you want to build foundational literacy or apply AI directly in your role, Git offers courses designed for busy professionals.

With a wide range of classes taught by industry experts, you can:

  • Build essential AI skills at your own pace
  • Explore applications tailored to functions like marketing, IT, HR, or operations
  • Stay current as tools and practices change

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