Revolutionizing Business with AI and Cloud ERP: 2024's Key Digital Trends

It’s that time of the year when we wrap up the strategic technology trends that factor into business and technology decisions over the next few years. Some of these trends emerged last year, and they will continue to evolve and shape the Cloud ERP landscape in 2024.

According to Gartner, these 2024 trends deliver key benefits: protecting investments, optimizing for rise of intelligent app/solution builders, and delivering increased value. So, let’s dive straight in.

Customer Experience R(E)volution

The trend of crafting unforgettable customer experiences will be the driving force in 2024.

Gartner says, “Organizations will need to focus on creating a “customer experience loop” that continuously collects data, analyzes it, and then uses it to improve the customer experience.”

Amazon is an interesting use case here. Through an interactive customer service portal, 24/7 live support, proactive communication with order updates, and a robust feedback system, Amazon ensures a seamless and responsive customer support ecosystem.

The combination of self-service options and human interaction caters to diverse customer needs. By encouraging feedback and reviews, Amazon not only assists other shoppers but also utilizes data analytics to continuously improve services. This customer-centric model establishes a positive feedback loop, reinforcing customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Amazon’s example underscores the significance of integrating technology, proactive communication, and data-driven insights to create a customer service loop that goes beyond issue resolution to actively contribute to overall customer well-being.

Cloud ERP: Operational Efficiency Overdrive

Constellation Research estimates the global cloud ERP market will be worth $40.1 billion by 2025 and have a compound annual growth rate of 9.3%. This means, more businesses are expected to adopt automation and digitized workflows, which continue to be at the forefront of organizational efficiency.

Intelligent applications can learn to respond appropriately and autonomously. They deliver experiences that dynamically adapt to the user.

Self-integrating applications are a new paradigm in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems that aim to automate and simplify the integration process between disparate applications and data sources.

Unlike traditional integration approaches, which often rely on manual configuration and custom coding, self-integrating platforms leverage artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and semantic technologies to automatically discover, understand, and connect with other applications. Therefore, these self-integrating solutions result in operational efficiencies.

For instance, self-integrating systems can reduce integration costs by automating the integration process. Self-integrating applications significantly reduce the time and effort required to connect applications, lowering integration costs by up to 80%. Businesses also achieve enhanced data consistency, improved agility and adaptability, and simplified governance and compliance.

However, there are several key technologies are driving the development of self-integrating applications, including:

API discovery and management
Semantic data matching
Real-time data synchronization

Causal AI

Constellation Research sees a shift from transaction systems to AI-driven systems. With different use cases of AI in ERP emerging, Causal AI is a relatively new technology, but it has the potential to revolutionize the way ERP solutions are used.

Causal AI can be used to perform root cause analysis, predictive maintenance, demand forecasting, fraud detection and risk assessment. In addition to these specific use cases, causal AI can also be used to improve the overall performance and efficiency of ERP solutions. For example, causal AI can be used to optimize supply chains, automate tasks, and personalize user experiences.

Democratized Generative AI

Generative AI (GenAI) has the potential to automate a broad range of ERP tasks and therefore boost productivity, reduce costs, and offer new growth opportunities. Since it doesn’t require users to be highly skilled, due to its widely availability, GenAI will level the playing field in terms of access to information and skills across a broad set of roles and business functions, making it one of the most disruptive trends of this decade.

By 2026, more than 80% of enterprises will have used generative AI APIs and models and/or deployed GenAI-enabled applications in production environments, up from less than 5% in 2023.

In fact, Oracle has integrated GenAI as a service. With its established history of storing the world’s most business-critical, valuable data, a modern data platform, and low-cost, high-performance AI infrastructure, Oracle’s generative AI offerings span applications to infrastructure and provide the highest levels of security, performance, efficiency, and value.

Sustainable Digital Transformation

In 2024, businesses will continue to ensure that the use of IT becomes more efficient, circular and sustainable.

Gartner predicts that by 2027, 25% of CIOs will see their personal compensation linked to their sustainable technology impact.

This means, making AI more environmentally friendly is a key component of any sustainable technology program. This process includes making AI as efficient as the human brain by adopting “composite AI”, which uses network structures to organize and learn similarly to the efficient human brain; monitoring the energy consumption, and stop training AI as soon as improvements flatten out and no longer justify the costs of continuing; and by running AI at the right place at the right time. Sustainability also means not investing in AI use cases that could damage business value or the environment

Read: Explore RPA – An Intelligent Revolution in Oracle ERP Automation

AI in ERP

Autonomous Application Integration is another trend that will change the digital transformation landscape in 2024. Aspire Systems has pioneered this technology with a patented AI-ERP solution.

The AI-ERP methodology uses a variety of AI and ML techniques to automate tasks and make decisions. For example, the ERP system can use natural language processing (NLP) to understand and respond to user queries, computer vision to analyze images and videos, and machine learning to predict future events.

AIM takes self-integration to new heights, powered by hyper-automation and anomaly detection. Businesses can achieve a 150% ROI in the first year of implementation with this technology, tailor-made for Oracle ERP.

Autonomous ERP implementation is still a relatively new concept, but it is one that is rapidly gaining traction. Businesses of all sizes are starting to see the potential benefits of this approach, and adoption is expected to grow in the years to come.

Conclusion

How these trends fare in 2024 depends on how CIOs and CEOs use these technologies to achieve their goals for 2024 and beyond. Businesses should examine the potential of these trends in relation to their specific needs and factor them into their strategic planning for the next few years, adjusting business models and operations appropriately. Gartner predicts the positive outcomes from adopting these trends, which include enhancing resilience, maximizing value from data, attracting, and retaining talent, achieving ESG goals, driving growth, and accelerating digital business.

Revolutionizing Business with AI and Cloud ERP:2024’s Key Digital Trends