AI is all about doing more with less and opens the door to new possibilities
In 2025 and the second half of this decade, artificial intelligence (AI) will become a defining measure of South African businesses' success. Today, the technology touches every corner of the modern enterprise, from sales and marketing to administration and finance. According to a survey conducted by Ipsos for Google, AI usage is up in South Africa compared to 2024, with excitement about its potential now outweighing concern. Over half of the surveyed South Africans report they've used generative AI (GenAI) in the last year.
Author: Werner Joubert, commercial SYS director (South Africa & SADC) at Asus
This level of adoption reflects the impact of AI not only in large multinational enterprises, but also in small-to-medium businesses, fledgling entrepreneurs and lone professionals who see the technology's potential at any scale. Technology vendors have responded to this by creating an ecosystem of systems and solutions that help businesses leverage AI to unlock new value. With the right strategic implementation, enterprises can turn potential into performance.
AI at any scale for any business
So, how is AI all about doing more with less? At its core, AI is an exercise in automation. It eliminates the need for employees and professionals to carry out manual, repetitive and time-consuming tasks.
Some of the most common AI uses in the enterprise today, regardless of the size or scale, include:
- Schedule optimisation: Companies can use AI tools to optimise scheduling by consolidating factors such as employee availability, skills, preferences and customer traffic. For example, a business like a coffee shop can determine who and how many employees they need available to meet demand levels throughout the day.
- Customer service: Chatbots and other conversational AI tools can provide business customers with additional support and serve as a dedicated portal for addressing queries.
- Finance: GenAI platforms, backed by large language models (LLMs) that specialise in accounting, cash flow and taxes, can help employees process transactions and invoices more quickly, while also reducing the potential for data entry errors.
- Personalisation and content creation: Every business has the potential to be unique. Using GenAI tools to create tailor-made content and promotional material, businesses can put their stamp on the landscape while offering high levels of customisation based on customer preferences, behaviours and market trends.
From there, the potential applications of AI expand to cover all enterprise functions, across every industry vertical, from education to healthcare. As a business driver, AI has proven to be incredibly versatile and scalable, with businesses integrating it into their organisations in whatever way, shape or form they see fit. They're able to do that with the help of state-of-the-art hardware and digital resources that make AI accessible like never before.
The right kind of tech?
For many businesses in South Africa, AI adoption does not involve investing large sums of money in training their own models or running expansive cloud computing environments. Not every enterprise requires the same level of digital infrastructure to run and evolve.
For many, the value of AI lies in simple integrations and the use of cutting-edge products that are readily available. We see this with the likes of Gemini and Midjourney, but the AI revolution has also given rise to innovative platforms and services that blend seamlessly and are work with existing enterprise hardware.
One such example is Copilot, an AI-powered chat service from Microsoft that generates content and automates tasks, while also supporting users of other Microsoft technologies such as Windows, Microsoft 365 and GitHub. It is accessible via web browsers on multiple operating systems, including Windows and macOS, and is also integrated into tools like Windows and Microsoft 365. It offers general AI assistant capabilities that can help enterprise users significantly improve and enhance their workflows.
Through services such as Copilot, technology vendors have begun to refine their value offerings and provide customers with solutions that are designed, built and optimised for AI in the enterprise. Laptops are now available with dedicated AI chips and OEM platforms and applications that further empower businesses and professionals. This is AI made accessible, and it has the power to transform enterprises of all shapes and sizes.
AI is how we do more with less. It's also how we do more with what we have. By evaluating the value proposition of AI features and understanding the gains they offer, enterprises can not only make their organisations more intelligent, but also help employees and professionals get the most out of their hardware, adopt the latest practices and take their ideas and businesses into the future.
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