A growing number of organizations are identifying ways to use GenAI to streamline their operations and accelerate innovation, using that new automation and efficiency to cut costs, carry out tasks faster and more accurately, and foster the creation of new products and services for additional revenue streams. That was the conclusion from ISG’s “2024 ISG Provider Lens global Generative AI Services” report.
The most rapid development of enterprise GenAI projects today is happening on text-based applications, primarily due to relatively simple interfaces, rapid ROI, and broad usefulness. Companies have been especially aggressive in implementing chatbots powered by large language models (LLMs), which can provide personalized assistance, customer support, and automated communication on a massive scale, ISG said.
However, most organizations have yet to tap GenAI’s potential for applications based on images, audio, video and data, the report says. Multimodal GenAI is still evolving toward mainstream adoption, but use cases are rapidly emerging, and with ongoing advances in neural networks and deep learning, they are expected to become highly integrated and sophisticated soon.
Future GenAI projects will also be more customized, as the sector sees a major shift from fine-tuning of LLMs to smaller models that serve specific industries, such as healthcare, finance, and manufacturing, ISG says. Enterprises and service providers increasingly recognize that customized, domain-specific AI models offer significant advantages in terms of cost, scalability, and performance. Customized GenAI can also deliver on demands like the need for privacy and security, specialization of tasks, and integration of AI into existing operations.
Progress in generative AI (GenAI) is poised to impact business procurement processes through advancements in three areas—agentic reasoning, multimodality, and AI agents—according to Gartner Inc.
Those functions will redefine how procurement operates and significantly impact the agendas of chief procurement officers (CPOs). And 72% of procurement leaders are already prioritizing the integration of GenAI into their strategies, thus highlighting the recognition of its potential to drive significant improvements in efficiency and effectiveness, Gartner found in a survey conducted in July, 2024, with 258 global respondents.
Gartner defined the new functions as follows:
Agentic reasoning in GenAI allows for advanced decision-making processes that mimic human-like cognition. This capability will enable procurement functions to leverage GenAI to analyze complex scenarios and make informed decisions with greater accuracy and speed.
Multimodality refers to the ability of GenAI to process and integrate multiple forms of data, such as text, images, and audio. This will make GenAI more intuitively consumable to users and enhance procurement's ability to gather and analyze diverse information sources, leading to more comprehensive insights and better-informed strategies.
AI agents are autonomous systems that can perform tasks and make decisions on behalf of human operators. In procurement, these agents will automate procurement tasks and activities, freeing up human resources to focus on strategic initiatives, complex problem-solving and edge cases.
As CPOs look to maximize the value of GenAI in procurement, the study recommended three starting points: double down on data governance, develop and incorporate privacy standards into contracts, and increase procurement thresholds.
“These advancements will usher procurement into an era where the distance between ideas, insights, and actions will shorten rapidly,” Ryan Polk, senior director analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Procurement leaders who build their foundation now through a focus on data quality, privacy and risk management have the potential to reap new levels of productivity and strategic value from the technology."
That challenge is one of the reasons that fewer shoppers overall are satisfied with their shopping experiences lately, Lincolnshire, Illinois-based Zebra said in its “17th Annual Global Shopper Study.”th Annual Global Shopper Study.” While 85% of shoppers last year were satisfied with both the in-store and online experiences, only 81% in 2024 are satisfied with the in-store experience and just 79% with online shopping.
In response, most retailers (78%) say they are investing in technology tools that can help both frontline workers and those watching operations from behind the scenes to minimize theft and loss, Zebra said.
Just 38% of retailers currently use AI-based prescriptive analytics for loss prevention, but a much larger 50% say they plan to use it in the next 1-3 years. That was followed by self-checkout cameras and sensors (45%), computer vision (46%), and RFID tags and readers (42%) that are planned for use within the next three years, specifically for loss prevention.
Those strategies could help improve the brick and mortar shopping experience, since 78% of shoppers say it’s annoying when products are locked up or secured within cases. Adding to that frustration is that it’s hard to find an associate while shopping in stores these days, according to 70% of consumers. In response, some just walk out; one in five shoppers has left a store without getting what they needed because a retail associate wasn’t available to help, an increase over the past two years.
The survey also identified additional frustrations faced by retailers and associates:
challenges with offering easy options for click-and-collect or returns, despite high shopper demand for them
the struggle to confirm current inventory and pricing
lingering labor shortages and increasing loss incidents, even as shoppers return to stores
“Many retailers are laying the groundwork to build a modern store experience,” Matt Guiste, Global Retail Technology Strategist, Zebra Technologies, said in a release. “They are investing in mobile and intelligent automation technologies to help inform operational decisions and enable associates to do the things that keep shoppers happy.”
The survey was administered online by Azure Knowledge Corporation and included 4,200 adult shoppers (age 18+), decision-makers, and associates, who replied to questions about the topics of shopper experience, device and technology usage, and delivery and fulfillment in store and online.
Mid-marketorganizations are confident that adopting AI applications can deliver up to fourfold returns within 12 months, but first they have to get over obstacles like gaps in workforce readiness, data governance, and tech infrastructure, according to a study from Seattle consulting firm Avanade.
The report found that 85% of businesses are expressing concern over losing competitive ground without rapid AI adoption, and 53% of them expect to increase their budgets for gen AI projects by up to 25%. But despite that enthusiasm, nearly half are stuck at business case (48%) or proof of concept (44%) stage.
The results come from “Avanade Trendlines: AI Value Report 2025,” which includes two surveys conducted by the market research firms McGuire Research Services and Vanson Bourne. Conducted in in August and September 2024, they encompass responses from a total of 4,100 IT decision makers and senior business decision makers across Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, UK, and US.
Additional results showed that 76% of respondents state that poor data quality and governance inhibits their AI progress. To overcome that, companies are stepping up investments in that area, with 44% planning to implement new data platforms and 41% setting governance standards. And to support the scaling of AI, budgets will focus on data and analytics (27%), automation (17%), and security and cyber resilience (15%).
"Mid-market leaders are at a defining moment with AI—where investments must not only boost efficiency but ignite future innovation and sustainable growth," Rodrigo Caserta, CEO of Avanade, said in a release. "The tension between cost-cutting and growth ambitions shows the AI value equation is still being worked out. Productivity with AI isn't just about doing things faster; it's about reimagining work itself. People are central to this shift, requiring workforce alignment, clear communication, and new training. Leaders must rethink how they support collaboration, measure productivity, and ultimately, assess the true value AI brings to their organizations."
Editor's note:This article was revised on November 13 to correct the site of Avanade's headquarters; it is located in Seattle.
Ashwin Rao will serve as the company’s principal AI architect, after a career in which he served from 2016 to 2022 as the head of AI for Target Corp., where he led a team that developed mathematical models for pricing, merchandising, customer experience, supply chain logistics, and other functions. Previous to that role, he worked in the finance sector on Wall Street, and is currently an adjunct professor of applied mathematics at Stanford University.
“The opportunities to use AI to transform the building products distribution industry are endless,” Rao said in a release. “I’m excited to get started on dozens of AI workstreams that, combined with advantages of scale, will help QXO increase efficiency, optimize supply chains and add value for our customers.”
He joins QXO as the company is preparing to target tens of billions of dollars of annual revenue over the next decade through accretive acquisitions and organic growth, the company says. According to Jacobs, who is the company’s chairman and CEO, AI will play an important role in that approach. “Artificial intelligence will permeate everything we do at QXO, including demand forecasting, inventory management, and e-commerce,” Jacobs said. “Ashwin is recognized as one of the brightest minds in enterprise AI. He will be instrumental in making QXO the most tech-forward company in the industry.”
Third party logistics provider (3PL) C.H. Robinson has applied generative AI tools to automate various steps across the entire lifecycle of a freight shipment, the Minnesota company said last week.
C.H. Robinson said it created AI-based technology that reads incoming email then replicates tasks a person would do, including giving customers a price quote, accepting a load, setting appointments for pickup and delivery, and checking on the load in transit. The company has used the approach to automate more than 10,000 of those routine transactions per day, allowing shippers who use email to get the same speed-to-market and cost savings as customers who use C.H. Robinson’s online platform.
After starting with price quotes, the company said it has applied generative AI to increasingly complex tasks. “We announced in May that we’d been using our new tech for emailed price requests. Within a few short months, we created new models to automate more shipping steps and have already implemented them at scale,” Arun Rajan, the company’s Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, said in a release. “This a major efficiency breakthrough for the industry and for supply chains around the world. When you think about retailers that need hundreds of different products on their shelves or automakers that rely on just-in-time delivery for the 30,000 different parts in a car, saving hours and minutes on every shipment matters.”
The technology also saves time, cutting the task for a person to take care of an emailed load tender from as much as four hours to 90 seconds, according to Mark Albrecht, the company’s Vice President for Artificial Intelligence.
“Once a person got to the email in their inbox, it still took an average of seven minutes to manually enter all the shipment details into our system – and that’s for a single load,” Albrecht said. “If the email tendered us 20 loads, a person would be stuck manually entering the information one load at a time. With generative AI, we can process all 20 loads simultaneously in the same 90 seconds. That’s an enormous time savings, especially when you consider we’ve scaled this to thousands of shipment orders per day just since June.”