According to a report by International Data Corporation (IDC), applying generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to a range of enterprise marketing tasks will result in an estimated productivity increase of more than 40 per cent by 2029.
Commenting on the report, Gerry Murray, research director, Enterprise Marketing Technology practice, IDC, said, “In next five years, GenAI will advance to the point where it will handle more than 40 per cent work of specific marketing roles. Because of rapid evolution of GenAI capabilities, marketing leaders will have to prepare their staff for fundamental changes to roles, skills, and organisational structure.”
To calculate potential impact of GenAI capabilities on marketing, IDC modelled work of 24 key marketing roles across five main categories of work, management and planning, branding and creative services, campaign and engagement, analytics and reporting, and other. Next, IDC estimated how much of each category of work can be delegated to GenAI over next five years. Combined with staffing levels and fully loaded cost estimates, IDC then calculated productivity impact of adopting GenAI throughout a large marketing team.
The results showed that GenAI will be able to handle more than 40 per cent collective work of marketing teams and potentially 100 per cent specific marketing tasks. While benefits of applying GenAI to marketing tasks will vary by company based on number of individuals associated with each role and salary ranges at organisation, productivity gains (as a percentage of work) offer strong guidance for marketing teams of all sizes.
To prepare their organisations to take advantage of GenAI, IDC recommends that technology (tech) buyers take following steps:
- Evaluate breadth and depth of discrete use cases vendors support today, and in future, as use cases will directly translate into business outcomes and create strong economic justification for investment.
- Buyers should also focus on how effectively a vendor’s architecture, tooling, and service resources accelerate journey down that use case road map.
- Determine level of infrastructure required to support each type of work.
- Implement AI capabilities from data layer up, not from task automation layer down. Every instance of GenAI in a commercial enterprise should share common services for data, governance, security, and so forth.
- Prepare staff (and organisations) for fundamental job changes, which may necessitate upskilling, reorganisation, elimination of some job titles, expansion of other job titles, and creation of entirely new career paths.
- Prepare your data. Organisations that do not have real-time, clean, governed data sets will not be able to take full advantage of this new generation of marketing technology.
The report also highlighted the potential of GenAI in increasing marketing productivity by over 40 per cent in next five years. It explores the various tasks that could be delegated to GenAI, and potential productivity gains. The report also provides advice for marketing leaders considering GenAI, emphasising the need for a broad use case road map, deep AI infrastructure, and fundamental organisational changes due to GenAI.
