Dive Brief:
- A new study from IBM found that 64% of surveyed CMOs and sales leaders believe their industries will be ready for cognitive technologies by 2020, only 24% have a strategy in place to implement those technologies right now and 61% report cognitive computing will disrupt marketing and sales by 2020, as outlined in a press release made available to Marketing Dive. Cognitive computing is IBM’s term for artificial intelligence (AI) technology such as Watson.
- IBM says cognitive computing is a next-generation technology that can quickly understand and analyze huge amounts of structured and unstructured data, including sounds and images, in a human-like fashion via reasoning, learning and interacting to improve accuracy over time. Compared to traditional analytical insights, cognitive computing is more predictive and can provide actionable recommendations.
- The study found CMOs see value for the technology in two key areas: improved customer experience and financial results.
Dive Insight:
The report underscores the challenges marketers face in integrating new technologies that are likely to touch many different areas of an organization. The challenges inherent in adopting disruptive technology was evident during the transition to digital and again with mobile. Some would even argue that there are still organizations working through how to integrate digital and mobile, making it that much more difficult for these companies to now have to start thinking about cognitive technologies. This suggests that those companies which have already successfully made the transition to digital and mobile could be better prepared to make the transition to the next big evolution, which is likely to be cognitive computing.
AI technology in all its variants has already become part of the marketing technology space and what AI can accomplish is evolving daily. Most marketers would likely agree that effective AI tech should be welcomed given the vast amount of first- and third-party data collected that, if harnessed, can provide real insights into everything from customer behavior during different points of the buying journey to business sector developments.
To make the most of AI, IBM offered several recommendations for marketers: make room for the tech in their business; enhance employees' business skills and not just data analytics skills because AI will do the analytical heavy lifting; make cognitive a golden opportunity for collaboration and innovation by creating alignment across business functions like marketing, sales, operations and finance, and start small if necessary, but do get started implementing AI tech.