Global Business Value of Artificial Intelligence to Reach $1.2 Trillion in 2018, Gartner Says
Global business value derived from artificial intelligence (AI) is projected to total $1.2 trillion in 2018, an increase of 70 percent from 2017, according to new research from Gartner. AI-derived business value is forecast to reach $3.9 trillion in 2022. Customer experience represents the majority of ai business value through 2020.
"AI promises to be the most disruptive class of technologies during the next 10 years due to advances in computational power, volume, velocity and variety of data, as well as advances in deep neural networks (DNNs)," said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner. "One of the biggest aggregate sources for AI-enhanced products and services acquired by enterprises between 2017 and 2022 will be niche solutions that address one need very well. Business executives will drive investment in these products, sourced from thousands of narrowly focused, specialist suppliers with specific AI-enhanced applications."
The Gartner AI-derived business value forecast assesses the total business value of AI across all the enterprise vertical sectors covered by Gartner. There are three different sources of AI business value: customer experience, new revenue, and cost reduction.
- Customer experience: The positive or negative effects on indirect cost. Customer experience is a necessary precondition for widespread adoption of AI technology to both unlock its full potential and enable value.
- New revenue: Increasing sales of existing products and services, and/or creating new product or service opportunity beyond the existing situation.
- Cost reduction: Reduced costs incurred in producing and delivering those new or existing products and services.
Gartner analysts found that AI business value growth shows the typical S-shaped curve pattern associated with an emerging technology. In 2018, the growth rate is estimated to be 70 percent, but it will slow down through 2022 after 2020, the curve will flatten, resulting in low growth through the next few years.
In the early years of AI, customer experience (CX) is the primary source of derived business value, as organizations see value in using AI techniques to improve every customer interaction, with the goal of increasing customer growth and retention.
CX is followed closely by cost reduction, as organizations look for ways to use AI to increase process efficiency to improve decision making and automate more tasks," said Lovelock. "However, in 2021, new revenue will become the dominant source, as companies uncover business value in using AI to increase sales of existing products and services, as well as to discover opportunities for new products and services. Thus, in the long run, the business value of AI will be about new revenue possibilities."
(For more information visit https://www.gartner.com).
