Nearly three-fourths (73%) of companies are prioritizing AI over all other digital investments and with the immediate focus on improving operational resilience in an unprecedented environment, according to a study by Accenture.

The report, Reinventing Enterprise Operations, found 90% of business leaders are applying AI to tackle aspects of operational resilience, which spans data-driven capabilities, such as finance (89%) and suppliers (88%), to experimentation with generative AI.

The findings assessed organizations across six measures of operational maturity: AI, data, processes, talent, collaboration and stakeholder experiences. While only a few (9%) companies achieved maturity on all fronts, those that did averaged 1.4X higher operating margins over peers, while driving 42% faster innovation, 34% better sustainability and 30% higher satisfaction scores.

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“All CEOs are under pressure to digitize faster, put more resilience in the business, and find new pathways to growth,” said Yusuf Tayob, group chief executive of Accenture Operations. “The right investments in technology while advancing talent, data and processes is what drives a new performance frontier.”

With a talent strategy that mirrors data and digital maturity, enterprises averaged nearly three-times (11%) higher productivity when prioritizing training and specialized skills to address talent needs. This was further echoed by investments being made in new ways of working (cited by 94%) and the 90% of (COO, CIO, CHRO) respondents who plan to increase specialized and technical talent over the next three years.

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To fully capture the opportunity, leaders should take these five actions to evolve operations and achieve a new performance frontier:

• Humanize AI experiences: explore new use cases to enhance experience-related outcomes and simplify relationships with employees and customers.
• Data decisiveness: define a clear strategy that governs how data is created, collected and enriched, encouraging debate and removing biases to capture the most effective insights to guide decision-making.
• Innovate processes: visualize “as-is” processes, apply AI-driven insights to discover new efficiencies, while simulating scenario changes to optimize business process improvements.
• Agile workforce: create agility within workforce strategy; empower employees with a choice of technology tools to meet needs.
• Take a 360° approach: drive value creation holistically, building it from the ground up and across all functions by using data-driven insights, from customers, employees and other ecosystem partners.