Real-world problems generative AI can solve in your business today — not tomorrow or someday

Trying to get stakeholders on board with adopting generative AI for business solutions? You can’t just talk about the potential benefits of generative AI — like the famous line from Jerry Maguire says, you’re going to have to “show [them] the money.” You need to demonstrate how AI will solve problems in your business right now.

But how can you give concrete examples of business impact when generative AI technology is still emerging, the hype cycle is at an all-time high, and the possible risks for business implementation are hard to ignore? 

Here’s what you may not know: long before the ChatGPT explosion in late 2022, top companies in B2B, ecommerce, cybersecurity, and beyond were using enterprise-grade generative AI to solve issues that hamper teams and disrupt revenue.

The results speak for themselves: fewer bottlenecks, improved productivity and quality, and hours upon hours of time saved on tedious tasks.

In the spirit of Jerry Maguire, we’ll show you examples of problems real-world companies are solving with generative AI — problems that likely exist in your own business.

By the time you’re done, you’ll have the inspiration and ammunition you need to sell stakeholders on at least one strong use case for generative AI — and for getting started ASAP.

Summarized by Writer

• Generative AI has the power to radically transform content generation, research, repurposing, analysis, and transformation.
• Used to break through production bottlenecks, offload tedious taskwork, maintain consistency & compliance, and accelerate new hire training.
• Generative AI creates business value by automating, speeding up, and scaling the process of creating new content.
• Companies are saving time and effort by using generative AI to repurpose content, create more consistent documents, and focus on higher-value work.
• The Big Book of Enterprise AI Use Cases can further help spark some ideas for use cases in your own organization.

The many business uses for generative AI: a quick overview

Generative AI has the power to radically change content generation, research, repurposing, analysis, and transformation, not to mention streamline customer service, logistics and operations, and automate the recruiting process. It creates business value by automating, speeding up, and scaling the process of creating new content. It also extracts more value from your existing data and resources by transforming them into new contexts. 

Generative AI can support every stage of a content marketing strategy: research, ideation, drafting, editing, distribution, and repurposing. That’s why marketing is a smart entry-point for introducing a company to generative AI technology. 

Beyond writing and content creation use cases, there are enterprise AI use cases for all sorts of industries — material science, chip design, synthetic data, design of parts, and, more recently, drug discovery. 

Here are some of the primary problems that generative AI is solving in companies today.

Break through production bottlenecks

Production bottlenecks happen when processes become stuck and can’t keep up with customer demands. Generative AI is helping businesses break through these bottlenecks by automating processes, improving efficiency, and helping people make better decisions, faster. This technology can accelerate development cycles, maximize resources, and help companies increase their output.

AI solution story: How SentinelOne put an end to infinite editing rounds

SentinelOne, a global computer and network security company, was facing a growing problem with consistency and quality in their technical documentation and training content. As the team grew, they needed a way to ensure that all documents were on brand and globally ready. Deadlines came and went, and frustration mounted, as documents underwent a long and tedious review and approval workflow.

After searching for an automated solution, they found Writer, which had all the features they needed for streamlining the cumbersome process.

The team began by importing their approved dictionary of 800 words into the Writer terminology tool. The Writer Chrome extension gave the team the ability to check words in real-time as they wrote, which allowed them to quickly identify any errors and immediately correct them. Finally, they used Writer to automatically generate release notes and produce blog posts based on existing documents and training videos.

Overall, the team was thrilled with the results of using Writer. By automating their content production processes, they’re saving over 100 hours per month, reducing QA time by 50%, and creating more consistent documents. This allows them to focus more on their mission-critical projects and provide a better user experience for their customers.

Learn more: How SentinelOne secures global content at scale

Offload tedious taskwork

Time spent on mundane, repetitive tasks is like spinning your wheels‌ — ‌it feels like you’re getting somewhere but you’re not. Generative AI can free up your business from these tedious tasks, allowing resources to be used on activities that’ll move the needle instead. With this newfound freedom, your most talented and skilled people can spend their time on initiatives that create real value.

AI solution story: How Ivanti tossed their tiresome to-do list

The team at security automation platform Ivanti faced a unique challenge when their go-to-market strategy shifted from focusing on new customers to better cross-selling into their current customer base. With only four people on the entire content marketing team, producing the necessary copywriting was a daunting task‌ — ‌especially with their specialized language and wordsmithing needs. When the team discovered generative AI, they knew this could be a viable solution for their needs.

Generative AI has drastically sped up the Ivanti content production process, halving the time it takes to produce content and freeing up the team’s time and energy to be more creative. Ivanti has been able to repurpose content more efficiently, with the Writer Recaps functionality helping them transform podcasts into takeaways and smaller pieces to make it more digestible for their readers. Thanks to generative AI technology, the Ivanti team has been able to save time and effort so they can focus on higher-value work.

Learn more: Powering the Ivanti GTM pivot with enterprise-grade AI

Maintain consistency and compliance

Inconsistencies and noncompliance across an organization can be likened to having a broken engine without a mechanic. All the individual parts may be in the right place, but without them functioning as intended, the whole system is out of sync. Generative AI helps businesses maintain consistency and compliance by being able to act like a mechanic, quickly identifying discrepancies and errors, providing actionable recommendations and insights, and automatically fixing anything out of whack. This helps teams spot and address issues before they become a bigger problem, just like a mechanic can stop small problems from becoming bigger ones.

AI solution story: How Adore Me stamped out their sustainability standards struggle

Adore Me was facing a challenge that’s all too common for businesses today: how to maintain compliance and consistency in their content production. With a fast-growing team and increasing workload, the company was at risk of making mistakes and failing to meet their sustainability standards. To keep up with the pace of their rapid growth, they needed a solution that could automate and streamline the content creation process while also ensuring that their high standards were met.

That solution came in the form of generative AI. Writer equipped the team with a custom app for press releases, allowing them to quickly and easily create professional-grade content. Additionally, the Writer AI-powered style guide enabled the team to automatically cross-check all written content against their voice and sustainability language. This allowed Adore Me to free up resources and focus their time and energy on more high-impact projects.

The results of Adore Me’s shift to generative AI have been impressive. Their writers have saved countless hours that were previously spent on monotonous tasks, and the team has been able to ensure compliance with their sustainability standards without sacrificing creative freedom. With Writer, Adore Me is well-equipped to continue scaling their business and meet the demands of their customers.

Learn more: Adore Me’s strategic shift to AI

Accelerate new hire training

New hire training is similar to learning how to drive a car — both involve mastering difficult skills with intricate knowledge that takes time and effort. Just like proper driving instruction can help reduce the amount of time needed to reach driving proficiency, generative AI technology can help businesses reduce the amount of time it takes to bring a new hire up to speed. With generative AI technology, businesses can automatically generate content, such as training materials and job simulations, allowing new hires to fill any knowledge gaps and receive personalized instruction, so they can reach a level of proficiency more quickly.

AI solution story: How iManage equipped an army of new employees

Document management platform iManage was struggling to quickly ramp up new writers on their style guides and content guidelines. The team had to review and edit all material before publication, creating a large backlog of articles that hampered their ability to scale. This issue was further complicated by the fact that the existing two-person team had to provide repeat guidance on basic grammatical type corrections, stylistic rules, and terminology.

To solve this problem, iManage decided to invest in Writer, since it was a generative AI platform that could securely train on their best-performing blog posts, landing pages, ppc ads, email, and LinkedIn and Twitter social. Writer would enable their team of writers to write and publish content quickly while ensuring accuracy, readability, and clarity that was on-brand with their organization’s goals. Furthermore, the AI platform incorporated the iManage own terminology catalog to help authors understand the difference between terms and avoid common mistakes.

Since implementing the AI platform, iManage has experienced an impressive 100% growth in their team, scaling from 200 to 1000+ articles published per year. The team publishing model enabled by generative AI has also allowed non-writers to produce great content without having to worry about requiring constant review and editing. Ultimately, generative AI has enabled iManage to quickly train new hires and non-writers so that they can produce higher quality content faster.

Learn more: That time Karl from iManage scaled support output by 400% with Writer

 
Solve business problems with generative AI: define your maturity stage and create a proof of concept

Ready for your business to write its own solution success story with generative AI?  Take a look at Content Science’s content maturity model. After identifying what content maturity stage your company is in, you can explore how best to integrate AI with your current processes.

Start with a proof-of-concept approach for enterprise adoption of new technology and identify where AI can be most impactful. 

Look for ‌bottlenecks in your business that are taking up the most time and resources. Could generative AI streamline customer service? Could it be used to speed up product design? Analyzing these areas is the key to unlocking the full potential of generative AI, so don’t be afraid to get creative.

To help spark some ideas for use cases in your own organization, we’ve created The Big Book of Enterprise AI Use Cases.