Featured Insights
IGNITE Your AI Journey: A Pragmatic Playbook for Real-World Transformation
November 15, 2004
From Iron Man's JARVIS to today's workplace reality, AI has evolved from Hollywood fantasy to that overachieving coworker who somehow knows everything – both exciting and slightly intimidating. And we're not just talking hypotheticals: A whopping 72% of companies now use AI at least weekly (up from just 37% in 2023), investing an average of $10.3M in 2024 (that's 2.3x more than last year, for those keeping score).
For many organizations, implementing AI feels like standing at the edge of a very complicated cliff with nothing but a parachute made of buzzwords and a pocketful of promises from tech vendors. Enter the IGNITE framework – our six-stage roadmap for transforming AI from an abstract moonshot into a practical, results-driven reality.
Ride the Dragon - Why Embracing AI Can Only Help in Sales & Marketing
November 11, 2024
In the realm of business, much like in the world of Westeros, those who can harness the power of dragons reign supreme. Today, our dragons come in the form of artificial intelligence (AI), and nowhere is their impact more transformative than in sales and marketing. Just as the Targaryens rose to power by mastering dragon riding, modern businesses can soar to new heights by embracing AI.
How Artificial Intelligence is Reshaping Organizational Collaboration and Culture in Innovation
October 30, 2024
For years, corporate America has grappled with the challenge of “silos” - those invisible but formidable barriers that keep departments isolated, information trapped, and innovation stifled. Departments like marketing, finance, R&D, and operations often worked with limited collaboration. Even when they did come together for innovation co-creation sessions, it was often a one-off and hard to keep the momentum consistent.
The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Accelerating Innovation
October 24, 2024
Innovation has long been the lifeblood of competitive advantage, allowing companies to stay relevant in a rapidly changing marketplace. The combination of intuition, experience, and occasionally luck often determined the next great breakthrough. Today, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI)—and particularly generative AI (gen AI)—is transforming this process and changing the blend of art and science. According to Dr. Ted Ladd, professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at Harvard and Hult, this shift is poised to change the way companies approach innovation across multiple dimensions and democratize it across company ranks, thereby accelerating results.
AI 101 for Execs: A First-Timer Primer
October 9, 2004
Are you a senior executive who talks about AI but has never actually tried it? Here’s how to start.
Change Management Has Changed Forever
September 23, 2024
Do you remember the exact moment the Internet became an integral part of your life? Yeah, me neither. There wasn’t one single point in time where you went from nothing to IoT. The steps that brought the Internet into our lives were incremental, enabling us to learn along the way. It started with an AOL disk in your mailbox with painfully slow speeds. And now… practically ubiquitous Internet access, WiFi everywhere, Alexa, Uber, work from home…and AI. Who knows what comes next?
Enhancing Customer Loyalty With AI-Driven Retention Strategies
August 23, 2004
In business, customer retention is a critical metric for success. While acquiring new customers is essential, retaining existing ones is far more cost-effective and can significantly boost profitability, particularly when viewed through the lens of the lifetime value of a customer. Traditional retention strategies, however, often fall short in addressing the nuanced and often fickle nature of customer behavior. This is one area in which AI tools shine, as they revolutionize how forward-thinking businesses approach customer loyalty and retention. By integrating AI into retention strategies, businesses can unlock new avenues for growth and profitability, making customer loyalty not just a goal but a sustainable reality.
Mastering Multi-Stakeholder Discovery in Enterprise Sales: The AI Advantage
August 9, 2024
In the world of enterprise sales, information is power. And nowhere is this more true than in the discovery phase of big deals. Yet, too often, sales professionals make the critical mistake of limiting their discovery efforts to a single point of contact or a small subset of stakeholders. This narrow approach can lead to costly blindsides that derail even the most promising opportunities. Let's dive into why comprehensive, multi-stakeholder discovery is essential in landing those game-changing deals, and how AI can revolutionize this process.
How can AI drive alpha in private capital?
July 18, 2024
Every private capital fund, regardless of investment thesis, is considering the impact that AI will have on how they conduct their business and how their portfolio companies can successfully leverage AI. Venture capital and growth equity funds must consider not only if AI will impact the viability of a company’s current products and services before they invest in the next round, but also how AI tools can generate competitive advantage within the operations of their current portfolio companies. Put more simply, private capital investors who become early adopters in this AI revolution will have a competitive advantage in driving alpha for their LPs.
AI-Enhanced Strategic Planning: A Secret Weapon for Marketing Success
July 12, 2024
Developing a strong strategic plan is essential not only for setting a vision for the company, but also for building a strong marketing plan that supports business success through enhancing marketing effectiveness, customer connection, and resource management. Therefore, integrating AI into the strategic plan also reaps benefits at the marketing level. A good place for a company to start its AI journey is where the need is greatest and the impact will be the strongest: understanding its markets and target customers. By mining more data more quickly, companies can find deeper insights and also stay agile as they respond to changing conditions.
Do You know where your AI Is?
June 24, 2024
Going to see a doctor for a health concern is never a pleasant experience, but patients at least have the expectation of treatments that will lead to improvement. Yet, in 2023 a software developer at a healthcare company integrated an unauthorized AI diagnostic tool into the company's electronic health record system, leading to inaccurate patient diagnoses and treatment recommendations. This incident highlights the risks of using unvetted AI tools in sensitive industries like healthcare, but the risks span across all industries.
Why Now
June 14, 2024
At NextAccess, we have the privilege of working with clients across various industries. One thing that I've observed is the different ways that companies are experimenting with and starting to adopt AI. Some companies are letting experimentation happen organically, and various groups or departments are free to try different tools to see if they can find a meaningful use case. Other companies are taking a very directed top-down approach, identifying specific opportunities and charging full speed ahead with custom solutions. A third group of companies is taking a wait-and-see approach and asking, "Why now?"
Empowering Advancement Through AI: Strategies for Leaders in Education
May 17, 2024
For educational institutions and nonprofits, the extraordinary potential for AI to transform advancement strategies — furthering an organization’s mission through fundraising, donor engagement, and alumni relations — is becoming increasingly clear. However, the reality is that most nonprofits and educational institutions are just beginning their AI journey.
Big in Japan: AI in the Insurance Industry
March 15, 2024
One thing we hear a lot of are questions around use cases for AI in specific industries. Recently, NextAccess sat down with Wil Bachman of staffing firm Umbrex to discuss a consulting engagement in the automotive sector that used AI tools to streamline and improve the auto accident claims process.
Regulatory Roundup
March 22, 2024
Even as companies are rushing to invest in AI strategies, they’re also thinking about the implications of some of the regulatory changes that might be coming down the pike—or at least they should be. While the AI landscape has a bit of a Wild West feel to it at the moment, eventually the sheriff is coming to town, and firms should be thinking now about how they can stave off the incipient gunbattles before they wind up in the hoosegow.
AI and Marketing: What You Should Know
March 1, 2024
NextAccess recently attended a roundtable event held in NYC which brought together speakers from some of the most well-known companies out there: Ogilvy, Zappos, Meta, and Microsoft, among others. Designed for a marketing audience, the event sought to untangle some of the confusion around AI and to discuss how marketers should be thinking about incorporating AI tools into their workstreams and processes in a realistic and methodical way.
Using AI in RevOps Today, Part 2
February 15, 2024
Our previous article kicked off a discussion into how businesses could dip their toes into turbulent AI waters, so to speak, by incorporating a few relatively simple tools into their workstreams.
Today we continue that discussion with a look at other aspects of RevOps that can be streamlined with AI integrations, such as data consolidation.
Using AI in RevOps, Starting Today
February 1, 2024
Yes, literally today. Many companies are floundering a bit these days when it comes to AI and figuring out how to incorporate it into their business operations. And, understandably so—there’s an incredible amount of information being disseminated, to the point that it’s easier to just do nothing until somehow it all shakes out.
