Why it’s important to act now with AI

AI has been a hot topic in the past few years. Yet, reading about AI can feel overwhelming or even frustrating: You’ve likely seen endless buzzwords, vague promises of revolutionizing everything, and case studies that seem far removed from your day-to-day operations. It often feels like everyone’s telling you to “Just adopt AI” without clearly explaining how it will actually help your business, let alone how to navigate the risks and costs associated with implementation.

The reality is that today, leaders need to understand AI, regardless of whether you’re navigating a fast-paced, competitive marketplace or operating in a more stable environment where efficiency is key.

Here are 3 reasons why you need to truly understand AI:

1. AI enables you to do more with less

You know you can make a lot of your organization’s routine tasks easier while saving money, right?

One of AI’s strongest advantages is its ability to streamline and improve processes through automation and intelligent workflows. By leveraging AI to manage routine tasks and make workflows better, businesses can operate more efficiently while reducing costs.

With features like automatically generated responses and suggestions, businesses can be faster in their actions, reduce manual effort, and allow your employees, your most valuable asset, more time for to focus on the work people are good at.

2. AI gives you knowledge and processing power to tackle more complex tasks

Want to solve your business challenges fast? AI gives businesses tools to tackle more complex challenges by offering predictive problem-solving and real-time insights on the task at hand.

When challenges arise, AI can link relevant knowledge, providing immediate solutions or past cases that help resolve issues faster. When the issue is resolved, AI can automatically create knowledge from it to assist with similar issues in the future.

3. AI takes your customer experience to the next level

Your customers are at the center of your business – why not serve them even better? AI improves customer service by automating interactions. Virtual assistants handle common queries like order status. Predictive intelligence provides real-time suggestions for agents, speeding up issue resolution. Automated responses instantly address routine inquiries, reducing wait times and boosting customer satisfaction.

Additionally, AI can provide suggestions from existing knowledge for the customer’s need, helping customers solve problems independently. These features combine to deliver a faster and better customer experience.

Make it easy: Use the AI capabilities offered by your existing platforms

AI features that are specifically designed for the business workflows you’re already using every day – cloud-based enterprise platforms like ServiceNow and Salesforce already have them. This means that you can implement a set of AI use cases quickly, without the need for building complex AI systems from scratch.

From a cost and complexity standpoint, leveraging these ready-made AI capabilities is currently the fastest time-to-value and most practical method to implement AI into day-to-day business operations. You can expect to see value in days rather than months.

For example, after implementing the platform’s AI capabilities, ServiceNow’s customers have seen:

71 % reduction in average time to resolve cases
15-25 minutes saved per major incident
Increase in customer satisfaction from 80 % to 99 %
Automatic creation of 600 knowledge articles
Increasing deflection rate from 35 % to 85 % (virtual agents or automatic responses able to resolve 85 % customer inquiries without need to escalate them to a human agent)
52 agent hours saved in one month using incident summarizations
37 agent hours saved in one month with resolution note generation

Who are doing it already?

Our customers have been working with AI investments since the release of ServiceNow’s built-in AI capabilities. Here’s a sneakpeek of a few cases:

Samhall

Samhall, a Swedish state-owned company, is leveraging AI to further simplify and accelerate internal processes. This is done with the help of ServiceNow’s GenAI capabilities.

Samhall is one of Sweden’s largest employers that provides job opportunities for individuals with disabilities or other challenges in entering the regular workforce. Its mission is to help employees develop professionally while offering high-quality services across the labor market.

Large Finnish construction company

Our customer, a large Finnish construction company, recognized the potential that AI provides for their business. They have now identified the most impactful AI use cases, and are currently in the process of implementing them.

The company has made significant investments to rapidly move forward with this initiative, making it operational in the upcoming weeks.

Sofigate’s Business Technology Backbone

Business Technology Backbone, Sofigate’s business unit, is leveraging ServiceNow’s AI capabilities to enhance the efficiency of its service desk operations. By utilizing AI to automatically generate case summaries and write resolution notes, service desk agents can resolve issues more quickly and effectively, ensuring a higher level of service.

As businesses expand and user bases grow rapidly, ensuring consistently high customer satisfaction is a priority. The ability to manage increased workloads efficiently while still delivering high-quality service, is essential to sustained growth.

Business Technology Backbone is a part of our business, that provides our midsized growth customers an all-inclusive IT service, covering everything from devices to networks and from IT service desk to cyber security.

Stay competitive in the evolving market

AI is no longer a distant concept: it’s here, whether you like it or not. Your competitors might soon be one step ahead if you don’t take action. Readily available AI solutions, especially through cloud-based platforms, offer significant value by improving efficiency, automating tasks, and enhancing decision-making. However, many Nordic companies are not fully capitalizing on these opportunities – yet.

If you don’t start adopting AI now, you may find yourself in a few years asking how your competitors became more agile, efficient, and innovative. Those who move early and embrace AI will gain a competitive edge that will be difficult to match later on.

Just like running a marathon, the most important part is daring to take that first step. Start by exploring how your existing platforms can integrate AI into your business and begin reaping the benefits today.

Author

Markus Heinonen leads technology services in Sofigate’s Platforms business, with strong experience in business-driven IT development. He is passionate about helping organizations leverage AI and other cutting-edge technologies to create a competitive edge. Markus describes himself as a people-oriented problem solver and eternal optimist.