Enterprise GenAI has the potential to boost employee efficiency and reduce costs. And though businesses are experimenting with GenAI tools, from customer service chatbots to copilot agents, the return on investment for a company’s AI investment is still hard to quantify. Many businesses are now choosing a path of AI pragmatism as the hype starts to abate.
Bosch UK & Ireland managing director, Steffen Hoffmann, thinks back to three years ago when AI disruption first took hold. “I think we probably all had more extreme views and opinions, there were people who were very passionate and only saw opportunities and a game changer. On the other end of the spectrum, you had people just focusing on the risks and danger to mankind,” says Hoffmann who notes that most people have now moved, “a little bit towards the centre, developing a more balanced view.”
GlobalData’s Artificial Intelligence Executive Briefing (fourth edition) estimates the total AI market will be worth $1,037bn in 2030. Within that market, the global specialised AI applications market will be worth $512bn in 2030, up from $39bn in 2023. As AI becomes more widespread, a greater focus on specialisation is emerging.
Professor Katie Atkinson, LawtechUK Advisory panel member says that early adopters of AI-based products are now starting to report on outcomes. “The Lawtech start-up market has shown that high performance products tailored to specific legal tasks that cannot be fully solved by general GenAI tools have a prominent place in legal services,” says Atkinson, which demonstrates the importance of use case fit and the value of specialist tools.
Atkinson expects adoption to continue throughout 2025 as Big Tech companies release new versions of their GenAI tools. “The roll out of GenAI tools into standard software suites is encouraging take up of AI within legal work," says Atkinson. And it is these Big Tech AI tools like Microsoft’s Copilot for everyday tasks that are driving adoption of GenAI within the enterprise.
Are AI assistants optional or business critical?
Microsoft Copilot 365 costs $30 per seat per month, that is in addition to the basic Microsoft 365 cost of £10.30 per month or £18.10 per month for the premium level. Adding the GenAI component to an organisation’s arsenal of business tools can more than triple annual costs. Enterprise technology professionals are then left with the question – what is its value versus hype?
Geoff Kneen, CEO of IT services company Advania which was among some of the first Microsoft partners globally to achieve complete workforce integration of Copilot, says that Copilot has “seriously improved” productivity across Advania.
“From streamlining meeting recaps and action items to aiding in hiring and sales, its versatility benefits all types of teams. HR professionals now don’t start from scratch on tasks and can leverage Copilot to draft job specifications. Sales teams have enhanced their prospect engagement, and service delivery managers have gained valuable insights from their ticketing data,” says Kneen.
Communications platform Zoom has its own AI agent, Zoom AI Companion, which is included in the platform’s enterprise proposition. Chief sales & growth officer at Zoom, Graeme Geddes, says whether or not a company decides to invest in AI tools in addition to its day-to-day enterprise software or choose a solution like Zoom’s which is built in with no extra cost, the issue has become one of market competitiveness.
“If you don't have access to these AI technologies, and others do, you're going to be behind. As a CEO, you're now having to choose between the people who have superhuman capability and those who don't. And so, our philosophy is, we should empower leaders and IT managers to democratize access to this,” says Geddes. “We’re really looking to push the industry and embed these technologies as foundational, not something that you charge $30 or more for,” he adds.
On the democratisation of technology, Geddes notes that this founding principle followed by Zoom was demonstrated by the company’s growth trajectory. “If you go back to when zoom was founded, our founder CEO, at a time when video was really expensive decided to give away the first 40 minutes for free,” says Geddes.
Enterprise GenAI presents opportunities but like any new technology carries security risks. And any evaluation of enterprise GenAI must factor risk into the value proposition. Microsoft president for Identity and Network Access, Joy Chik, says that AI tools add another layer of security risk. Microsoft’s controversial – and some say premature – launch of its Recall AI feature brought the challenge of balancing AI driven data access versus security to the fore.
Recall AI was introduced in November 2024 as part of an early release program for public preview for Windows Copilot Plus users. The AI driven feature records and indexes all user activity to provide search and retrieval of content from any point in time from any application using a simple AI query. The feature was met with backlash about data privacy and the periodic snapshot feature was not considered worth the potential security cost by users before Microsoft put the feature on pause.
Chik says Microsoft is always thinking about how to protect its user’s data. “There are many mechanisms to make sure of data privacy. That's really important, and it's one of the core principles of our Secure Future Initiative,” says Chik. The core principles being secure by design, secure by default and secure operations.
Another core principle of Microsoft's Secure Future Initiative is providing users with a default on or default off setting. “The kind of visibility that allows the user to know what data is being collected and how data is being stored is super important. So that kind of transparency is really important, both from user understanding it, but also to get the benefit of what AI and everything that brings to it. So at the end of the day, it's really balance of productivity, privacy and security,” explains Chik.
What's next for enterprise GenAI?
The best way companies can determine the value of GenAI tool deployments, such as Microsoft’s Copilot, is to gauge how enterprise developers are leveraging the assistance tools to help further their app modernisation efforts, according to GlobalData research director Charlotte Dunlap.
"Similarly, IT operations, and other DevOps roles within organisations, will provide the most relevant use cases to executives evaluating the ROI and importance of GenAI technology," adds Dunlap.
According to GlobalData’s GenAI quarterly update for Q4 2024, the introduction of Agentic AI has taken the GenAI world by storm. Agentic AI is autonomous and eliminates the need for a humans to create prompts. Microsoft customers including McKinsey and Thomson Reuters have already used the technology to build AI agents for increased efficiencies.
And with the advent of newer Agentic AI tools, business transformations will be much more easily accomplished, notes Dunlap.
"Agentic AI technology enhances the advantages of workflow automations by creating these business processes which work on behalf of an employee or team. They promote AI-powered systems with actions and advanced knowledge and can include complex and autonomous tasks without human interaction," she says.
"Furthermore, developers are accessing Agentic AI tools for their ability to abstract data access complexities and create custom AI-powered applications which are more deeply personalised to improve the customer experience," adds Dunlap.
This march towards ever greater personalisation of customer experience in tandem with the development of industry specific GenAI solutions, the opportunities grow for companies to find an enterprise GenAI solution with the best use case fit possible.
"Enterprise GenAI: value vs hype?" was originally created and published by Verdict, a GlobalData owned brand.
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