Harnessing generative AI: The bold challenge and reward for industry leaders

As organizations continue to explore AI’s potential, Microsoft customers are showcasing remarkable success stories, illustrating how they are transforming workflows, driving innovation, enhancing customer value, and seizing new growth opportunities. Despite the challenges of navigating the complexities and risks associated with AI integration, these companies demonstrate resilience and determination, proving that the rewards are well worth the effort.

To support our work with customers, we recently commissioned a study with IDC on The Business Opportunity of AI to demonstrate the return on investment (ROI) potential for organizations that fully commit to AI. One of the key findings is that those who have made the boldest strategic bets on AI are often reaping a commensurate reward: while companies using generative AI are averaging USD3.7 times ROI across the board, top leaders are realizing significantly higher returns, with an average ROI of USD10 times.¹

When our customers strategically apply Microsoft AI solutions to their existing processes, products, and services, they’re finding increased value, speed, and effectiveness—for these customers, AI truly is a force multiplier.

Leaders at H&R Block, dentsu, KPMG, and Novo Nordisk are welcoming the challenge of going big with generative AI and they’re leveraging AI to extend their competitive differentiation in their fields. We’ve spoken with leaders at each of these companies about their AI transformation journeys, and I’d like to share my takeaways from the conversations with these AI challengers. To hear it in their own words and learn about the challenges they faced and how they overcame them, watch our AI Challengers video interviews.

Gaining a competitive edge by delivering differentiated value

Professional services organizations are using the power of AI to customize their solutions and service offerings, enabling them to better serve their customers and stay ahead of their competition.

H&R Block is making it easier and more affordable for anyone to do their taxes with an experience that is friendly, convenient, and human. By creating diverse cross-disciplinary teams they are able totest new AI solutions with the front line employees to ensure the solutions provide real-time, reliable tax return preparation assistance every day, and bring a new level of empathy and perception to their customer interactions. Delivering exceptional service to clients remains a core priority and deploying technology where it will provide a competitive advantage is essential. Read the blog “H&R Block reimagines the tax experience with generative AI” from Aditya Thadani, Vice President of AI Platforms, at H&R Block.

KPMG has integrated generative AI with existing business practices to speed delivery times with analyses that are both more accurate and more insightful, inspiring more valuable client conversations and discoveries. KPMG’s reputation as a trustworthy partner is fundamental to their success, so it’s no surprise that one of their first steps was to build a “trusted AI framework” to guide the way they integrate and invent new AI solutions. Their thoughtful approach to innovation reinforces what their clients already value in them. Chief Digital Officer, Kelle Fontenot, shares more about this in her video and blog, “Leading Digital Transformation at KPMG with Trusted AI.”

Dentsu focuses on the responsible use of AI, collaborating with clients to utilize AI and other emerging technologies. This includes implementing innovative solutions like GenCX, which employs generative AI to enhance customer experiences. This solution applies AI to a brand’s first-party data to improve understanding of customer interactions, behaviors, sentiment, and engagements, allowing brands to engage with their customers more effectively and gain a competitive edge. They are connecting countries, cultures, and capabilities like never before to achieve their client promise of “innovating to impact.” You can read the blog, “Microsoft AI luminaries series: Equipping clients with AI tools for sustainable growth” from Chief Executive Officer, Angela Tangas, and watch her video, “Learn from Dentsu’s transformation.”

Making better predictions for next-generation treatments

For organizations with research and development at their core, the computational power of AI is helping them to unlock vast amounts of data to uncover more—and more accurate—insights and discoveries than ever before.

At pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, the strategic integration of AI into their existing systems is helping them increase the quality and efficiency of data processing and generate new hypotheses to speed up scientific discovery. Their teams have thousands of datasets at their disposal, and AI now plays a key role in identifying data patterns and trajectories that humans may not have picked up.

By integrating AI, Novo Nordisk is validating their findings faster and increasing the probability of success in developing targeted therapies. All of this amounts to making the company even faster and more effective in their delivery of next-generation treatments that can improve human health around the world. Watch Karin Conde-Knape, Senior Vice President of Global Drug Discovery, share her perspectives in the video, “AI Challenger: Novo Nordisk: AI in Pharma: unlocking data to optimise treatments” and read her LinkedIn post, “AI in Pharma: unlocking data to optimise treatments.”

Welcoming the challenge—now and in the future

We welcome AI Challengers like H&R Block, dentsu, KPMG, and Novo Nordisk, and are excited to continue supporting them and others as a trusted partner. We’ll continue to highlight learnings and strategies from more AI Challengers in the coming months—stay tuned for more stories and to learn more about what the IDC found about the evolving business value of AI, read The Business Opportunity of AI.

You can also explore the top five AI trends from the IDC study or be inspired by more than 200 examples of real-world businesses transforming with AI.

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¹ IDC InfoBrief: sponsored by Microsoft, 2024 Business Opportunity of AI, IDC# US52699124, November 2024.