Through the Looking Glass of the Intelligent Enterprise

By Alvin Toh, Co-founder, Straits Interactive

Paved by ChatGPT’s seminal debut at the end of 2022, generative AI, now part of the global zeitgeist, is shaping the way businesses operate. As we begin to move past the buzz of early adopters to systemic enterprise adoption, there is an emerging focus on building generative AI competencies and integrating relevant capabilities across departments. This development will significantly boost productivity and ultimately, profits.

The Rise of the Intelligent Enterprise

Accenture’s latest report “Reinventing Enterprise Operations with Gen AI,” found that 74% of companies have positively gained from using AI to improve operational processes, such as automating workflows and enhancing decision-making. The "intelligent enterprise" represents a new era, where AI seamlessly connects departments, automates data flows, and drives real-time, data-informed decisions. An e-commerce company, for instance, could use AI to analyse customer behavior and inventory levels simultaneously, enabling dynamic pricing adjustments and instant restocking to meet demand efficiently. This integration improves demand forecasting, proactive problem-solving and adaptability in ever-changing markets.

Generative AI As Specialised Collaborators Across Departments

SMEs and their employees are starting to progress from an automation-focused integration of AI into existing services, to wielding generative AI for creating new personalised solutions to strategic challenges. Legal professionals are using AI to draft and analyse complex contracts while educators are creating adaptive learning content befitting the needs of individual students. By contrast, traditional AI focuses on automating repetitive tasks—for example, systems that improve diagnostic accuracy by analysing medical imaging data in real-time or manufacturing tools that optimise product design by reducing material waste and accelerating prototyping.

With the growing adoption of generative AI tools backed by the latest models, such as OpenAI o1 and Gemini 2.0, acquiring advanced reasoning capabilities seems par for the course in SMEs. This shift enhances tasks such as problem-solving, strategic planning and compliance management through multi-step reasoning and predictive analytics. Coupled with emerging AI agents capable of executing complex tasks with minimal human intervention, there is promise of significant boosts in business productivity and bottom lines. Here's a closer look at how generative AI will continue to transform SME departments in the coming year:

1. Marketing & Sales: As we’ve already seen, generative AI speeds up the creation of targeted campaigns and sales proposals. By deriving actionable insights from customer data and tailoring content for specific audience segments, marketers can expect more precision in multi-channel outreach.

2. Customer Service: Chatbots are becoming default front liners in customer interaction through the provision of 24/7 support and instant answers. With the ability to analyse customer queries and escalate to human representatives when necessary, AI improves response times and customer satisfaction.

3. Human Resources: From automating recruitment and onboarding to streamlining performance management, AI will continue to optimise HR operations. Notably, the use of AI assistants to create tailored job ads and analyse employee feedback can save HR teams valuable time.

4. Compliance & Legal: Compliance is typically a resource-intensive area for SMEs. With generative AI tools specialised for data privacy work, SMEs can now automate compliance tasks, generate legal documents, and stay updated with regional data protection laws. Features such as Data Inventory Mapping and Risk Assessments minimise back-and-forth communication, enabling real-time collaboration and feedback.

5. Learning & Development: Generative AI has the potential to liven up the face of corporate training by offering personalised learning pathways and training materials via interactive learning interfaces. This approach opens up the possibilities of incorporating adult learning strategies for quality skill acquisition and retention.

Key Considerations for SMEs

While generative AI offers transformative benefits, the road is dotted with challenges that SMEs must tackle strategically in order to access its advantages. Key obstacles include workforce upskilling, addressing privacy concerns, and ensuring compliance with emerging regulations.

1. Upskilling and Workforce Adaptation: Job displacement is still a key concern among employees. As such, SMEs must continue prioritising upskilling and reskilling their teams, and prepare employees for roles that complement the capabilities of generative AI by bringing to the table their domain expertise and critical thinking. This also requires bridging the gap in mindset and skills needed to effectively collaborate with AI by fostering an open-minded culture of continuous learning.

2. Measuring Impact: While AI’s ability to improve efficiency is evident, its direct impact on outcomes, such as learning or productivity gains, can be harder to quantify. SMEs could consider metrics such as time saved on routine tasks, employee satisfaction scores, customer retention rates, and performance improvement percentages to gauge AI's effectiveness. Additionally, tracking specific key performance indicators (KPIs) aligned with AI integration goals can provide clearer insights into its overall impact.

3. Cybersecurity, Data Protection Compliance, and AI Governance: The desire for AI tools that reflect organisational expertise rather than rely on external datasets means companies are beginning to tap on their proprietary knowledge repositories—policy documents, operational manuals, and product specifications— to create more specific and context-aware outputs via Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Naturally, this must be accompanied with robust data management and cybersecurity measures. 

Investments in digitising and structuring internal data are crucial for achieving AI readiness. This involves ensuring data accuracy, accessibility, and integration across systems, so that actionable insights are delivered timely. With sufficient AI readiness, a logistics company, for instance, could use RAG to analyse historical delivery data alongside current traffic conditions, enabling real-time route optimisation and more efficient deliveries.

As SMEs integrate AI, data privacy and security must remain top priorities. Clear policies could include defining acceptable use cases for AI, ensuring data is anonymised, and implementing routine audits to monitor compliance. Strong measures might involve deploying advanced encryption for sensitive data, conducting regular employee training on AI ethics and data security, and establishing cross-departmental committees to oversee AI implementations. With regulations like the EU AI Act set to take effect in 2025, these steps are essential to govern AI use ethically and responsibly.

Strategic AI Adoption in 2025

For companies, embracing AI in 2025 requires strategic intent and a focus on targeted investments to achieve real ROI. This means aligning AI initiatives with clear business goals, ensuring measurable outcomes, and building a culture of responsible innovation. This includes addressing ethical considerations, safeguarding data privacy, and investing in workforce development.

Collaboration with universities, technology vendors, and industry partners will be critical in driving responsible AI adoption. SMEs could explore partnerships with institutes for AI training programs, work with technology vendors to co-develop customised AI tools, or join industry consortiums to share best practices and technological developments.

At Straits Interactive, we collaborate with institutes of higher learning to deliver industry-leading content and interactive AI tutors that support a flipped classroom experience in our data protection courses and AI-focused programmes for educated use of generative AI and its governance. To bridge from the classroom to the real-world, we provide AI assistants tailored to specific domains, enabling adult students to apply their newly acquired knowledge to their workplace with confidence.

Through strategic integration of the technology, these capabilities will bolster productivity and innovation, allowing SMEs to adapt swiftly to market demands. SMEs can enhance their agility, competitiveness, and long-term growth prospects, levelling the playing field against larger competitors in an increasingly AI-driven world.

Capabara, our Next-Gen AI Capability-as-a-Service platform, is currently available on a limited trial basis. If your company is interested in developing generative AI competencies and capabilities with us, write in to sales@straitsinteractive.com with your company email address. You can also stay tuned to Capabara’s latest developments by following CAPABARA on LinkedIn or heading over to capabara.com to find out more about how your organisation can be empowered through safe, secure and sustainable generative AI adoption.

DPOinBOX AI is our latest iteration of privacy management software, now powered by generative AI, to help Data Protection Officers with compliance and data governance. Sign up for a demo at dpoinbox.ai to see how it can augment your data protection practices.

This article was first published on The Governance Age on 19 Dec 2024.