AI revolution: imperative for companies to prepare now in order not to be left behind

(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor) - The great industrial revolutions never start with a roar: they begin as signals that few really catch. Steam in the nineteenth century, electricity in the twentieth, the internet in the 1990s: each time, the mechanisms started off slowly, almost in a whisper. Then, suddenly, the critical threshold arrives: the technology becomes mature, costs plummet and applications multiply without warning. Those who have been able to glimpse the portents of the future and have moved in time then gain a competitive advantage that puts them ahead of the competition while those who lag behind risk slipping into irrelevance. A risk to which even former ECB president Mario Draghi recently drew attention, according to whom Europe risks a future of stagnation if it loses the train of innovation and AI in particular. The imperative is to act now without wasting any more time, given that in the United States productivity gains have returned to the levels of the 1980s and early 1990s while in Europe there is a slowdown in growth and the last time European productivity equalled US levels was in 1995.

One development that could spur gains is the arrival of AI agents who can be assigned specific tasks. They are able to examine the context, act according to their assigned role and adapt based on experience to predict users' intentions, complete codes and forms and choose the best tools to accomplish the job assigned to them. Artificial intelligence agents, while still at an early stage of development, are acquiring a central role in the digital transformation of businesses: according to Boston Consulting Group, two-thirds of executives at major global companies consider them key elements of their strategies. However, the standards that will enable communication between agents developed by different vendors are still being defined. Thereforecompanies need to prepare now, ensuring that their data is structured and ready to be used effectively by AI. AI agents can interact with IT systems, store information and support employees and customers in carrying out tasks, with cross-cutting applications: in HR departments they can generate job announcements or set targets; in marketing they can create personalised e-mails and web pages; in the supply chain they can draft instructions for product inspections. To make full use of this potential, it is crucial that data retain their descriptive metadata when transferred to data warehouses because their loss compromises the quality of operations and overall efficiency. RAG (retrieval augmented generation) technology, which allows language models to access companies' proprietary data, also requires clean, consistent and unified information.

Besides the technical aspects, the quality of business processes is crucial: integrated and well-organised workflows enable reliable data collection, which is necessary to obtain accurate outputs from Ai agents. Companies can also customise and train their agents thanks to dedicated tools provided by vendors. One example is Oracle AI Agent Studio, which provides dozens of pre-configured agents and allows new ones to be easily created. The rise of AI agents is already transforming critical business activities, and in the future they may manage entire functions such as logistics and inventory, replacing many traditional interfaces. The adoption of AI is growing: in 2024, 13.5 per cent of European companies were using it, with higher values in Sweden, Denmark and Belgium; in the US, the percentage varies between 20 per cent and 40 per cent. However, only 1% of top managers consider their GenAI projects to be 'mature' today.

"AI makes it possible to find talented personnel much more quickly, improves financial performance indicators, makes forecasting and order completion processes much more accurate, and supports continued revenue growth thanks to the ability to engage customers in an absolutely targeted manner," explains Oracle Italy's VP Cloud Application, Giovanni Ravasio. "You act faster, make smarter decisions, and reduce costs. A perfect example is Amplifon. The company has been using the AI functionality of Oracle Intelligent Document Recognition for some time to speed up the invoice management of all its points of sale worldwide. Vendor documentation is now transmitted directly to the ERP system and this enables centralised monitoring'. The differentiator of the future, but also of the present, will therefore not be between those who use artificial intelligence or not, but between those who know how to integrate it into their operating model and those who instead treat it as a mere technological accessory. The new industrial revolution will reward organisations capable of rethinking processes, skills and corporate culture, transforming AI into a structural multiplier of efficiency and innovation. Those who can grasp the signs of the times and prepare themselves in time will be able to build faster, more transparent and resilient production ecosystems, ready to support the next wave of growth fuelled by artificial intelligence.