A November study by Demandbase and Wakefield Research of 500 B2B marketers (250+ employees) found that while marketers are confident that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will reshape marketing by 2020, they lack confidence in how to implement the new technology.  According to Demandbase, “80 percent of all marketing executives believe AI will revolutionize marketing over the next 5 years, but only 26 percent are very confident they understand how AI is used in marketing and only 10 percent of marketers are currently using AI today.”

Marketers had numerous concerns about implementing AI, including

• Integrating AI into their existing technology (60%)
• Training employees (54%)
• Difficulty interpreting the results (46%)
• Implementation costs (42%)

On the benefits side, marketers listed

• Better insights into accounts (60%)
• More detailed analysis of campaigns (56%)
• Identifying prospective customers (53%)
• Expediting daily tasks (53%)

“As someone who has been studying AI for many years, I’ve recognized the promise of AI and B2B marketing for some time, which makes it really rewarding to see this vision is now shared by marketing executives,” said Aman Naimat, SVP of Technology at Demandbase. “This data reveals that in order to be successful, marketing leaders need to lead the charge and present opportunities for AI instruction and experience for their teams, to ensure implementing it into their B2B technology stacks is effective.”

In a November Harvard Business Review article titled “How Artificial Intelligence Will Redefine Management,” (Vegard Kolbjørnsrud, Richard Amico, and Robert J. Thomas), the authors offered a set of best practices for managers.  Noting that managers spend 54% of their time on administrative tasks such as scheduling, monitoring, and reporting, they suggest that managers transition administrative tasks to AI.  Instead managers should focus more on judgment work which combines rules with “their knowledge of organizational history and culture, as well as empathy and ethical reflection.”  Thus, there will be a greater emphasis upon “judgment-oriented skills” such as “creative thinking and experimentation, data analysis and interpretation, and strategy development.”

The authors also suggested viewing AI as a trusted colleague instead of a “race against the machine.”  Thus, managers can merge judgment with AI-based decision support, simulations, and search and discovery activities.  A full 78% of managers believe they will trust the advice of intelligent systems.  Furthermore, because AI will be approachable through voice and other intuitive interfaces, AI will be their “always-available assistant and adviser.”

Another recommendation was harnessing the creativity and ideas of co-workers and team members.  With time freed from administrative tasks, there is more time for synthesizing multiple ideas and formulating new products and processes.  “Manager-designers bring together diverse ideas into integrated, workable, and appealing solutions. They embed design thinking into the practices of their teams and organizations.”

Finally, managers will need to hone their social skills with an emphasis on networking, coaching, and collaborating.

The authors concluded that “writing earnings reports is one thing, but developing messages that can engage a workforce and provide a sense of purpose is human through and through. Tracking schedules and resources may soon fall within the jurisdiction of machines, but drafting strategy remains unmistakably human. Simply put, our recommendation is to adopt AI in order to automate administration and to augment but not replace human judgment.”