The role of artificial intelligence in business

In business, artificial intelligence (AI) is more than just a trend—it’s a crucial tool reshaping how we approach marketing and customer engagement. Business leaders across industries are accelerating their investments in AI and machine learning (ML), with marketing teams leading the charge in adoption and implementation.

Why this surge? At the heart of this AI revolution is the ability to segment behaviors and target specific customer groups with precision. It’s about making smarter decisions, crafting more personalized strategies and understanding customer needs on a deeper level, all of which are crucial across various business units.

This article will explore the diverse roles AI plays in improving business functions like marketing, operations, product development, human resources, customer support and security. Each domain benefits from AI’s ability to streamline processes, improve efficiency and provide actionable insights, making every interaction and decision more meaningful and effective.

What is AI?

Artificial Intelligence in business refers to the simulation of human cognitive functions by machines to automate tasks, analyze data and make intelligent decisions at scale. In practice, businesses use AI to streamline marketing campaigns, personalize customer experiences and extract actionable insights from social media conversations—tasks that traditionally required extensive manual effort and human intelligence.

Today, AI is an umbrella term that includes various subfields, such as machine learning, deep learning and natural language processing.

The development of AI has led to the creation of numerous applications, including chatbots, virtual personal assistants (e.g., Siri, Alexa), recommendation systems, autonomous vehicles and medical diagnosis systems. These applications demonstrate the practical implementation of AI in performing specific tasks with high accuracy and efficiency.

For social media marketers, AI is most powerful when it processes data from all major networks simultaneously. Sprout Social’s AI analyzes conversations across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly known as Twitter), LinkedIn and Pinterest, providing unified insights that single-platform tools miss.

Which functions of AI are used in business?

Businesses leverage four core AI technologies to transform operations, improve decision-making and drive innovation. Each serves distinct purposes but often works in combination to deliver comprehensive solutions.

 

AI Technology	What It Does	Business Applications
Machine Learning (ML)	Analyzes data, identifies patterns and makes predictions independently as it processes information	Predictive analytics, customer behavior forecasting, personalized recommendations
Natural Language Processing (NLP) & Sentiment Analysis	Understands and interprets human language to analyze customer feedback and social media content	Social listening, customer support automation, brand sentiment tracking
Named Entity Recognition (NER) & Semantic Search	Identifies important entities (brands, locations, people) and provides contextual understanding of queries	Social media monitoring, content categorization, competitive intelligence
Deep Learning (DL)	Uses neural networks to learn and adapt to new patterns with minimal human intervention	Image and speech recognition, complex data analysis automation, fraud detection

Machine learning (ML)

Machine learning algorithms analyze data, identify patterns and make predictions based on their results. They power AI tools that support businesses in gaining valuable insights from disparate data for decision-making. While ML models learn independently as they process data, they can also be updated manually based on your specific needs.

NER and semantic search

Named Entity Recognition (NER) identifies entities defined in the ML model as important to a business, such as geographic locations, brand names, famous people, etc. And semantic search provides a contextual understanding of a query input by a user. Together, they support the processing and analysis of large volumes of unstructured data so you can improve search accuracy, automate data processing and extract meaningful insights for informed decisions.

NLP and sentiment analysis

Natural Language Processing (NLP) and sentiment analysis support businesses in understanding and interpreting human language, making them essential tools for analyzing customer feedback, social media content and other textual data while automating report generation.

Deep learning (DL) for AI automation

Machine learning uses algorithms and learns independently but sometimes requires human intervention to correct errors. Deep learning, on the other hand, uses neural networks to learn and adapt to new patterns with little to no human input. It’s used to automate complex data analysis tasks and processes, including image and speech recognition, which supports businesses in streamlining operations and improving efficiency.

Benefits of AI in business

Investing in artificial intelligence is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity for survival and growth. Companies that integrate AI into their workflows don’t just save time; they unlock entirely new capabilities that drive revenue and deepen customer loyalty.

AI delivers tangible business value across five core areas:

• Increased efficiency and productivity: Automate repetitive tasks like reporting and data analysis to free your team for strategic work
• Increased customer personalization at scale: Deliver hyper-personalized experiences to millions of customers simultaneously
• Data-driven decision making: Process billions of data points to reveal patterns invisible to manual analysis
• Competitive advantage: Identify trends before they peak and manage brand health proactively
• Improved ROI and cost reduction: Reduce operational costs while driving higher engagement and revenue

Increased efficiency and productivity

Manual reporting and data crunching drain your team’s bandwidth. AI automates these repetitive tasks, freeing your people to focus on strategy and creativity. Organizations that use Sprout Social see a 75% decrease in the amount of time spent on reporting, allowing them to pivot from data gathering to decision making instantly.

Enhanced customer personalization at scale

Customers expect brands to know them. AI analyzes behavior and sentiment in real-time, enabling you to deliver hyper-personalized experiences to millions of customers simultaneously. Tools like Sprout Social’s Enhance by AI Assist tailor responses to match the tone of incoming messages, ensuring every interaction feels human and relevant.

Data-driven decision making

Gut feelings don’t scale. AI processes billions of data points to reveal patterns invisible to manual analysis. With real-time insights from over 1 billion daily social messages, leaders make confident decisions backed by hard data rather than intuition.

Competitive advantage

While competitors struggle to keep up with the speed of social, teams using AI stay steps ahead. You identify trends before they peak and manage brand health proactively. This agility allows you to dominate share of voice and capture market attention while others are still reacting.

Improved ROI and cost reduction

AI delivers measurable financial impact. By automating workflows and optimizing content performance, businesses reduce operational costs while driving higher engagement. The result is a massive 233% return on investment for organizations leveraging Sprout Social’s comprehensive platform.

How Sprout Social delivers AI benefits

Sprout Social’s AI-powered platform integrates these benefits across every feature, eliminating the need for multiple point solutions:

 

AI Capability	Sprout Social Feature	Business Impact
Social Listening & Sentiment Analysis	AI-powered Listening with sentiment tracking across 1B+ daily messages	Identify trends before they peak; monitor brand health in real-time
Content Personalization	Enhance by AI Assist for tone-matched customer responses	Scale personalized engagement without sacrificing authenticity
Content Generation	Message Ideas by AI Assist for on-brand content suggestions	Accelerate content creation while maintaining brand voice
Competitive Intelligence	AI-driven competitor analysis across networks	Benchmark performance; identify content gaps and opportunities
Customer Support Automation	Smart Inbox with intelligent routing and tagging	Reduce response time by 75% while improving satisfaction
Analytics & Reporting	AI-assisted report generation with automated insights	75% reduction in reporting time; faster strategic decisions

Ready to achieve similar results? Start your free trial to experience Sprout Social’s AI-powered features firsthand, or schedule a personalized demo to see how AI can transform your specific workflows.

How artificial intelligence supports business functions

AI has revolutionized various business functions, including marketing strategies, product development, sales efficiency, customer support, human resources, operations and security. Marketers and business professionals leverage AI to create stronger campaigns, make smarter decisions and streamline workflows. AI is changing the game and setting new benchmarks for business excellence.

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Artificial intelligence in marketing

With marketing, AI transforms how businesses engage with their customers, offering tangible benefits that directly impact a brand’s bottom line. Marketing teams leverage AI across nine critical areas:

• Social listening: Monitor brand sentiment and market trends in real-time
• Content personalization: Tailor messaging to individual customer preferences at scale
• Market research: Extract insights from massive datasets to inform strategy
• Content generation: Accelerate creation with AI-powered suggestions
• Competitor analysis: Benchmark performance and identify competitive gaps
• International marketing: Analyze sentiment across multiple languages
• Predictive analytics: Forecast customer behavior and trends
• Targeting decisions: Identify high-value audience segments
• Media buying: Optimize ad placement and channel selection

Social listening

AI-powered social media management tools like Sprout Social integrate AI into social listening to support your analysis of social media conversations, translating vast amounts of data into actionable insights. This helps you understand customer sentiment in real time, monitor brand health and respond swiftly to market trends, ultimately fostering stronger customer relationships and brand loyalty.

Content personalization

AI personalizes content based on customer behavior, preferences and demographics. For example, Netflix uses AI to provide personalized movie and show recommendations, enhancing the user experience and engagement for its audience.

Sprout Social’s Enhance by AI Assist uses AI to personalize customer interactions at scale. It tailors responses based on the tone of the incoming messages, ensuring that replies are relevant and resonate with the customer’s emotional state. This capability enhances customer engagement by delivering personalized experiences at scale.

Market research

AI tools dissect large datasets, revealing market trends, customer preferences and competitive landscapes, enabling businesses to make data-driven decisions.

Content generation

AI is also impacting content creation and the way we write. For instance, Sprout’s Message Ideas by AI Assist generates engaging content suggestions, helping marketers quickly craft messages that align with their brand voice and audience interests. This tool streamlines the content creation process, allowing users to focus on the strategic aspects of their campaigns.

Competitor analysis

Competitor analysis using AI offers detailed insights into competitors’ strategies and customer perceptions. By tracking essential metrics such as audience growth, engagement and post volume across various networks, marketers can benchmark their social presence against competitors.

This comprehensive analysis—including share of voice, engagement, sentiment and impressions—helps identify key areas where a brand stands out or needs improvement.

Sprout’s powerful competitor analysis features aid in discerning which content types are most effective, helping to refine strategies to resonate with target audiences. Regular use of these AI-powered tools for competitive analysis empowers businesses to stay agile, adapt strategies and maintain a competitive edge in their industry.

International marketing

AI’s ability to analyze and interpret multilingual sentiment plays a crucial role in helping businesses navigate the complexities of international marketing by providing language support, cultural adaptation, market analysis and customer insights. This enables businesses to create more effective and targeted marketing strategies for diverse international audiences.

Predictive analytics

AI’s predictive analytics are pivotal in forecasting future customer behavior, a crucial factor in marketing decision-making. By analyzing customer data, AI predicts trends and preferences, enabling businesses to tailor their marketing efforts more effectively. This foresight leads to smarter, data-informed choices, ensuring that marketing strategies are relevant and timely, catering to evolving customer needs and preferences.

Targeting decisions

AI enhances targeting decisions by sifting through extensive customer data to pinpoint the most appropriate audiences. It identifies patterns and preferences within customer interactions, allowing businesses to focus their products or services on the groups most likely to engage. This targeted approach, driven by AI’s deep learning capabilities, ensures that marketing efforts are concentrated where they will have the highest impact and conversion.

Media buying

Companies like Volkswagen utilize AI to optimize their advertising strategies. AI analyzes vast amounts of data to determine the most effective channels and placements for advertising, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of media spend. AI’s application in media buying improves campaign performance and provides valuable insights into consumer behavior and media consumption patterns.

Artificial intelligence in product development

AI in product development helps teams move beyond traditional design and customer preferences. Its capabilities extend to creating more intuitive and customer-centric products driven by data and innovation.

Product design

AI modernizes product design by analyzing market trends, customer feedback and historical data, leading to products that meet current and future market needs. For example, AI prompts can guide designers in creating products that satisfy market demands and predict future trends. This approach enables exploring a broader range of possibilities, ensuring products are both innovative and relevant.

Project management

In project management, AI automates routine tasks, optimizes resource allocation and provides real-time progress insights. By analyzing historical project data, AI enhances risk assessment and mitigation strategies, leading to more productive and proficient project management.

Predictive maintenance

AI’s role in predictive maintenance is pivotal, using data-driven methods to analyze historical data, identify patterns and anomalies and generate proactive maintenance recommendations. This approach significantly reduces downtime and maintenance costs, increasing overall efficiency.

Integrating AI into product development marks a new era of innovation, where products are functionally superior and deeply aligned with customer expectations and market dynamics.

Artificial intelligence in sales

AI is creating a new paradigm of efficiency and customer engagement. From email campaigns and lead scoring to proposal writing, AI is enhancing both the sales process and the outcomes.

Email campaigns

AI-driven analytics optimize email strategies by creating narratives that strike a chord with customers. By analyzing customer data and behavior, AI crafts engaging and contextual content. It automates the drafting and sending of personalized emails at scale, ensuring each communication is tailored to the recipient’s interests and needs.

Lead scoring

In lead scoring, AI processes huge quantities of customer data to improve accuracy in identifying potential customers. It considers various factors, including website behavior, demographics, firmographics, job title, purchase history and social media engagement. This results in a ranking system that prioritizes leads based on their conversion likelihood, streamlining the sales process.

Proposal compilation

AI also plays a key role in generating personalized, evidence-based sales proposals. Using AI tools, sales teams create compelling visuals, presentation slides and text that directly address customers’ needs and aspirations, which increases the chances of closing deals.

Artificial intelligence in customer support

AI enhances customer support by enabling businesses to offer more personalized and optimized service. AI enables teams to customize customer interactions, automate the ticketing process and leverage trend analysis to provide deeper insights into customer preferences and behaviors. These applications streamline operations and elevate the overall customer experience.

Personalize customer support

AI empowers businesses to offer personalized support by analyzing customer data and interaction history. This leads to tailored support experiences and recommendations. For example, KFC China‘s introduction of facial recognition technology to predict customer orders based on age and mood is a testament to AI’s capability to enhance customer service.

Customer Care by Sprout Social equips teams to create authentic customer connections at scale. With tools like AI-powered sentiment analysis, Sprout uses this technology to turn customer interactions into insightful data, helping businesses fine-tune their care strategies and content.

Sprout’s social listening solutions further automate FAQs and identify customer sentiment, respectively, supporting a comprehensive and personalized customer service approach. This AI integration is not just about responding faster; it’s about understanding customers better and providing a consistently excellent experience across platforms.

Automate ticketing process

AI streamlines the ticketing process by efficiently routing customer queries to the appropriate agent or department and providing standardized responses for common queries. It also offers self-service portals for customers to find solutions independently, boosting efficiency in customer service.

Trend analysis

AI analytics tools gather and examine large amounts of customer data, offering valuable insights into customer behaviors, preferences and trends. These insights are crucial for businesses to refine their service strategies and product offerings, ensuring they stay aligned with customer needs.

Artificial intelligence in human resources

AI is transforming the HR landscape by streamlining recruitment, enhancing employee engagement and understanding employee sentiment.

Understand the voice of the employee

AI analyzes employee feedback from various sources, such as surveys, performance reviews and social media. By providing insights into employee sentiment, engagement and satisfaction, AI helps businesses understand and respond to their workforce’s needs more effectively.

Simplify recruitment process

AI automates several recruitment tasks, including resume screening, candidate sourcing and interview scheduling, thereby saving time and enhancing recruitment efficiency.

For example, Unilever uses AI to screen video interviews and analyze candidates’ body language, tone of voice and word choice. Thanks to AI’s ability to eliminate bias, Unilever saw a significant increase in new hires from various gender, racial and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Trend analysis

AI tools gather and analyze employee data, offering insights into behavior, preferences and trends. These insights support the refinement of HR strategies and increase employee engagement, fostering a more satisfied and productive workforce.

Artificial intelligence in operations

AI enhances operational processes by increasing efficiency and supporting innovation via automated processes and optimized asset management.

Automate processes

Intelligent automation blends AI with robotic process automation (RPA) to enhance decision-making and streamline workflows. AI’s cognitive capabilities and big data understanding enable predictive outcomes, allowing companies to proactively refine processes.

AI-powered automation is critical for Business Process Management (BPM). BPM automatically analyzes optimal methods at different stages, creating replicable models. An example of BPM in procurement is automating the entire purchasing process. Advanced automation increases profitability, accountability, productivity and flexibility. It saves time and reduces errors.

Inventory management

AI transforms inventory management by forecasting demand with precision and maintaining optimal stock levels. Heineken uses machine learning algorithms to predict demand patterns and maintain optimal inventory levels.

AI-driven inventory management lowers storage costs and increases profitability and customer satisfaction by ensuring products are readily available when needed.

AI is also shaping a more proactive, data-driven approach to business management. This sets a new standard for business agility and customer responsiveness, where operational excellence is intrinsically linked to intelligent technology.

Artificial intelligence in fraud detection and security

The global cybersecurity AI market is experiencing explosive growth as organizations prioritize threat detection and prevention. Using advanced algorithms, AI proactively detects, counters and minimizes risks, processing extensive amounts of information in real time to spot patterns and anomalies that signal breaches or fraudulent activities.

Monitoring media threats

AI helps monitor media dangers by continuously scanning digital spaces for potential security threats to brands. This capability is vital in today’s digital-first landscape, where threats can emerge from numerous online channels.

Identifying physical anomalies

AI algorithms are also adept at detecting unusual patterns, significantly contributing to sectors like retail, banking and public safety. Swift recognition and response to physical threats are made possible by AI’s keen pattern recognition, enhancing security measures in these critical areas.

For example, Mastercard is helping banks predict scams in real time and before any money leaves a victim’s account. This enables the organization to thwart fraudulent attempts swiftly and effectively, minimizing potential damage.

What does the use of AI in business mean for different stakeholders

Integrating AI in business encompasses a spectrum of benefits and use cases for diverse stakeholders.

For employees

AI’s role in business processes translates to an enhanced employee work experience. By taking over routine tasks, AI frees employees to focus on strategic, creative activities, increasing job satisfaction and opening up avenues for career development. This shift towards high-value work fosters a dynamic and innovative work environment.

Education and training in AI ethics and application enable businesses to inform their workforce about AI’s potential and limitations and how to leverage it responsibly.

For businesses

AI equips businesses with tools for enhanced efficiency, deeper customer insights and innovative product development. It drives a competitive edge and lays the groundwork for future growth, enabling businesses to make informed decisions, create stronger marketing campaigns and develop more effective workflows.

Defining an organizational structure for AI governance is key. This includes assigning roles and responsibilities and introducing an independent body to oversee AI compliance for responsible and ethical usage.

For investors

Investors should focus on AI solutions that enhance a company’s existing strengths. AI should drive long-term impact and act as an ‘exoskeleton’ to business processes. It’s crucial to select strategic AI partners who understand the nuances of control, ownership and accountability. Look beyond the immediate allure of AI and focus on sustainable, value-driven integration.

For the public

As AI integrates deeper into our lives, digital literacy becomes vital. Ethical AI frameworks set clear guidelines and principles for AI development and deployment.

These frameworks ensure AI systems prioritize transparency, fairness, privacy and accountability, serving the greater good without harming individuals or communities.

Continuous monitoring and auditing are critical to upholding these ethical standards. Regular audits by trained experts are necessary to assess AI performance and identify issues like biases that emerge over time. Informed consent is another crucial aspect, where the public’s voluntary and informed agreement is obtained for AI-related processes, and individuals are fully aware of how their data is used.

Adopting these measures allows businesses to respect privacy rights, handle sensitive information securely and mitigate potential risks associated with AI.

Getting started with AI in business

Adopting AI doesn’t require a complete overhaul of your tech stack or a team of data scientists. The most effective approach is to start with high-impact, low-complexity use cases that integrate seamlessly into your existing workflows.

Begin by identifying the bottlenecks in your current processes. Is your customer care team overwhelmed by volume? Are your marketers spending hours analyzing sentiment manually?

These are prime opportunities for automation. Platforms like Sprout Social embed AI directly into the tools your team already uses, making adoption intuitive and immediate.

Once you implement a tool, establish baseline metrics to track success. Monitor improvements in response times, engagement rates and team efficiency. With the right platform, you’ll move from implementation to ROI in record time, proving the value of AI to your stakeholders with undeniable data.

Future of AI in business

The future of business belongs to those who move from reactive to proactive. We’re entering the era of agentic AI, where systems don’t just analyze data but take autonomous action to achieve specific goals.

Watch for these three transformative AI developments reshaping business operations:

• Agentic AI systems: AI agents that autonomously flag issues, draft solutions, route to experts and update customers—all in seconds
• Multimodal AI models: Systems that understand text, images, video and audio simultaneously, revolutionizing social listening with visual trend tracking
• Real-time adaptive learning: AI that continuously refines its understanding of your brand voice and audience preferences without manual retraining

We’ll also see a shift toward multimodal models that understand text, images, video and audio simultaneously. This will revolutionize social listening, allowing brands to track visual trends and sentiment with the same precision as text. As these technologies mature, the gap between AI-native businesses and laggards will widen. Staying ahead requires a platform that evolves as fast as the technology itself.

Harness AI to drive business growth

The Business Case for AI: Organizations using Sprout Social’s AI-powered platform achieve 233% ROI and 75% reduction in reporting time within six months, according to Forrester’s Total Economic Impact study.

AI has moved beyond experimentation to become essential infrastructure for business growth. From marketing and customer care to operations and security, AI-powered tools deliver measurable benefits: increased efficiency, deeper customer insights and competitive differentiation.

The businesses winning with AI aren’t chasing every new technology. They’re strategically implementing AI where it amplifies human expertise and drives tangible outcomes. By focusing on high-impact applications—like social listening, customer personalization and data analysis—you achieve results without overwhelming your team.

Sprout Social’s AI-powered platform makes this transformation seamless. Our customers achieve 233% ROI while reducing reporting time by 75%, all while maintaining the authentic customer connections that drive loyalty. Whether you’re analyzing sentiment across billions of daily messages or personalizing responses at scale, Sprout’s AI works behind the scenes so your team can focus on strategy.

See how AI transforms social media marketing and customer care. Schedule a demo or start your free trial to explore Sprout’s AI-powered features with no commitment required.

Frequently asked questions about AI in business

How much does AI implementation cost for businesses?

AI costs vary widely, but platforms like Sprout Social include powerful AI features within standard subscriptions, eliminating the need for six-figure custom builds.

How long does it take to see ROI from AI in business?

You see results quickly when you choose the right tools. Organizations using Sprout Social typically achieve a full return on their investment in less than six months, driven by immediate gains in productivity and reporting efficiency.

Do I need technical expertise to use AI tools for my business?

No. Modern AI tools like Sprout Social are designed for business users, allowing social media managers and customer care agents to leverage advanced machine learning and NLP without writing a single line of code.

How AI in business maintains authentic customer relationships

Yes. AI handles rote work like tagging, routing and data crunching while surfacing insights that empower your team to be more empathetic and personal at scale.

How do I measure the success of AI in my business?

Focus on outcomes, not just output—track metrics like time saved on reporting, increase in response volume and improvements in customer sentiment. Sprout Social’s analytics automatically quantify these impacts, giving you the proof you need for leadership.