For Sharma, that meant starting from scratch, assembling a team of data scientists, and building an AI system. Then, Sharma and his team created a “smart audience platform” that placed ads showcasing an artist’s latest release in front of listeners most likely to engage with that artist. . The music industry may not be the first business case that AI and data analytics come to mind. However, AI-driven data analytics can have a transformative impact in any industry and across many use cases.
Why companies need advanced data analytics
Most organizations today are drowning in data. They collect data for compliance and regulatory reasons, and they also store additional data in the hope that it will one day be useful.
That day has come. Or, as Jason Hardy, global CTO at Hitachi Vantara, puts it, companies are having a “great moment”—realizing that AI-driven data analytics can deliver real business value from data. collected by them, giving them a competitive advantage. He added, “Traditionally, companies say, ‘Just store it and we’ll figure out what to do with it later.’ That became ‘No, this really affects us now; we need to be able to read that data in real time, process and infer based on it.’”
This has come true in the industry. In manufacturing, better analytics can improve productivity, reduce waste, and increase efficiency. In consumer-focused businesses, AI can detect customers’ emotional responses to specific product placements or measure customer service satisfaction. In supply chain-based industries, AI can predict and mitigate supply chain failures before they happen.
Hardy adds: “We’re seeing customers say, ‘I have to jump on this AI team. I have to figure this out. I needed a platform to help me do that, whether it was in the cloud or on-premises or a combination of the two.”
Unfortunately, most organizations don’t know where to start. Hardy says C-level executives tell him, “We want to use AI and machine learning. We want to use our data. We want to create value out of it. We really don’t know how. We don’t even know the question we’re trying to answer.”
This content is produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by the editorial staff of the MIT Technology Review.
