What Are the 3 Phases of a Successful B2B GenAI Transformation Strategy?

Why Do 90% of Executives Lack Confidence in Their AI Marketing Plans?

Is your B2B organization struggling to implement GenAI effectively? Discover Boston Consulting Group’s “Deploy, Reshape, Invent” framework for marketing, sales, and service. Learn 5 actionable steps to scale AI adoption, improve data quality, and maximize ROI in your business transformation journey.

Ready to move past uncertainty and turn your AI investment into measurable revenue? Continue reading to master the specific action steps needed to reshape your workforce, secure your data, and invent new customer experiences that keep you ahead of the competition.

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B2B marketing, sales, and service organizations are investing in GenAI’s potential — but according to Boston Consulting Group research, many leaders lack confidence in their approach. Gain insights into the winning strategies deployed by first movers, embracing a three-phase approach to launching a successful AI transformation. Learn how to prepare your organization for change, and start re-imagining your processes, functions, and workflows, scaling the benefits of AI throughout your organization.

Take-Aways

• B2B marketing, sales, and service leaders are investing in GenAI, yet unsure how to leverage its full potential.
• Launch your AI transformation and unlock value with a three-step framework.
• Execute the optimal AI transformation at your organization in five action steps.

Summary

B2B marketing, sales, and service leaders are investing in GenAI, yet unsure how to leverage its full potential.

GenAI top performers are leveraging the technology to increase revenue and efficiencies and improve customer journeys. According to research from the BCG Henderson Institute and Harvard Business School, successful adoption of GenAI leads to 25% faster output and 40% higher quality outcomes. However, while many leaders at marketing, sales, and service organizations expect AI to boost productivity and profitability, many are also failing to see a sizable return on investment. According to a Boston Consulting Group analysis, enterprises that fail to adopt AI risk falling behind the competition, as AI adoption is a key attribute that will help future-ready companies withstand disruptions and drive innovation.

“To create value, leaders must be bold. They must use the opportunity of adopting AI to fundamentally reshape marketing, sales, and service, reimagine the functions’ component processes, and invent new experiences throughout the end-to-end customer journey.”

Boston Consulting Group surveyed 900 executives from a range of industries and organizations of varying sizes — revealing that many leaders feel conflicted when it comes to using GenAI to enhance marketing, sales, and service functions: While 90% of leaders see GenAI’s transformative potential, believing it will play an “important or fundamental” role at their organization in the next few years, nearly half of leaders lack confidence or have neutral feelings about the potential impact of their GenAI strategy. Still, nearly 80% of leaders plan to boost their investments in GenAI over the next 12 months. Organizations embarking on their GenAI transformation journey often face challenges relating to privacy and security, scalability, data quality and literacy, and simply knowing where to start.

Launch your AI transformation and unlock value with a three-step framework.

Leverage the Deploy Reshape Invent framework, to launch your transformation in the following three phases:

1. Deploy — Kick off your transformation by creating a unified AI ambition, identifying what you need to change across marketing, sales, and service functions. Once you’ve identified what needs to change, start augmenting the productivity of everyday tasks, ensuring teams have access to the data architecture and AI tools they need to improve customer journeys, while retaining some autonomy over the execution of individual responsibilities.
2. Reshape — Re-engineer your most critical end-to-end workflows, transforming your business functions. You’ll need to upskill your workforce, reshaping employees’ roles and daily tasks. Consider reshaping your data, ensuring marketing, service, and sales teams have access to high-quality, clean data flows they can trust.
3. Invent — Reimagine your business models, leveraging GenAI to create new customer offerings and value propositions. Reflect on existing third-party relationships and pricing, and consider restructuring them to align with your new AI ambitions. Identify potential new sources of competitive advantage, finding innovative solutions to better serve consumers. Consider inventing new experiences — as opposed to fixating only on inventing new products. These experiences might include digital experiences that replace traditional human-led experiences and end-to-end digitized workflows.

Execute the optimal AI transformation at your organization in five action steps.

Research shows that you can maximize the impact of your AI transformation by taking the following action steps:

1. Set ambitious targets — Identify your biggest opportunities for value creation, such as ways to create efficiencies or eliminate costs.
2. Support teams in their AI transformation journey — Change will impact your workforce across all levels, so make sure people are ready to adapt. Position your company’s leaders as the face of change. Leaders should be modeling desired behaviors and engaging actively in AI initiatives. Be specific, detailing the ways in which your AI transformation will impact roles and responsibilities. Create learning incentives, empowering people to learn autonomously and supporting workers as they upskill. Expose people to AI-based tools and give them hands-on experience by embedding them in daily tasks, creating a network effect to achieve your desired learning outcomes throughout your organization.
3. Invest in technology — Reflect on which technology solutions are right for your organization’s unique needs. Existing applications will often suffice, but consider investing in customized applications if you’re interested in inventing new processes or models.
4. Prepare your data — Create interconnected systems that support data flows that help you better personalize and target your interactions with customers, based on a more holistic understanding of them.
5. Anticipate and mitigate risks — Consider launching pilots to better understand and address potential risks within a contained environment. Consider employing pre-configured or off-the-shelf GenAI applications to minimize risk, and be sure to follow responsible AI best practices.

About the Authors

Bryan Gauch, Phillip Anderson, Nick Schneider, Tyler Eline, and Matt Ross are professionals at Boston Consulting Group.