It's time to dream bigger: how organisations can improve and disrupt by building their own AI

The Guardian

11-03-2025

Businesses have the data they need to fuel advanced AI – here's what they can do with it
In his seminal work the Innovator's Dilemma, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen discusses how organisations that focus on sustaining innovations, such as improving existing products to meet the needs of current customers, can miss opportunities to develop more disruptive innovations. These could include new products, services or capabilities – which may have the potential to create entirely new markets.
It's a classic balancing act that business leaders have to manage – and one that becomes even more urgent in the era of AI, as Soraya Scott, Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft UK, says.
'Business leaders know they need to act now to get ahead on AI, but aren't always sure how to approach effectively in the short and long term to maximise impact. As a COO, I understand this challenge. My role involves ensuring that systems are in place to enable optimal performance now, while also developing long-term strategic plans and initiatives that drive growth, innovation, and resilience.
'The good news is that a sophisticated approach to AI can achieve both.'
Employees want access to AI now – and won't wait for companies to catch up. Microsoft's Work Trend Index (WTI) shows three quarters of global knowledge workers are already using generative AI, and 78% of AI users are bringing their own AI tools to work (BYOAI). However, the biggest benefits of AI are unlocked when organisations securely and responsibly combine the latest AI models with their company's unique information and expertise and build their own more advanced and strategic AI applications, for adoption at scale.
'Organisations are sitting on a treasure trove of untapped potential within their data' says Scott.
'With the right foundations, such as flexible and secure cloud infrastructure, robust data collection, and clean, diverse datasets, organisations can tap into the gold buried beneath their feet. By leveraging data as the fuel for more innovative AI development with Azure OpenAI, businesses can turn unstructured data into actionable insights, automate processes and enhance decision-making, as well as create new personalised customer experiences like never before.'
So, what innovative capabilities can organisations unleash when they build their own AI tools, products and services? The opportunities and capabilities of advanced AI
Vision
Orbital is a groundbreaking legal tech business founded in 2018. Based in London and New York, it offers AI-powered solutions to automate the administrative burden of property-related legal work, effectively mimicking the diligence tasks a real estate lawyer performs today. Among its technologies, the business chose to develop its innovative solutions using OpenAI models including GPT-4o and o1 offered by Microsoft Azure.
Orbital has built a custom AI Agent, Orbital Copilot, to speed up the process around real estate deals, enabling property professionals to analyse property documents and generate reports in seconds. This proprietary solution uses AI vision capabilities of Azure to process lengthy, often handwritten and photocopied, legal and property documents. Orbital Copilot is saving legal teams 70% of the time it usually takes to conduct property diligence work.
This is just one example of how AI can augment human performance and accelerate processes by identifying, classifying and contextualising visual information. AI vision can automate an array of static image analysis and recognition tasks, carry out optical character recognition (OCR), and even real-time spatial analysis, checking for and reporting on the presence and movement of people or objects – whether that's retail items on a shelf or people in a sports stadium.
Speech
Mercedes-Benz uses the Azure OpenAI Service to enhance their MBUX Voice Assistant. This in-car voice control enables dynamic conversations, offering car owners a voice assistant that understands more commands and engages in interactive conversations. Based on ChatGPT4o and Microsoft Bing search, the MBUX Virtual Assistant unites the collective knowledge of the internet. For example: 'Hey Mercedes, when does the cherry blossom season start in Japan?' – 'And when does it start in Germany?'. Or 'How does a black hole work? Explain it, so that children would understand.' Unlike standard voice assistants that often require specific commands, MBUX excels at handling follow-up questions while maintaining contextual understanding.
AI is incredibly useful for all kinds of speech related tasks, including transcription, language detection and translation. It can also generate human-like artificial audio for use in everything from audiobooks and announcements to podcasts. AI-powered real-time voice interaction is a game changer for customer service and call centre operations, enhancing efficiency and customer experience.
Decision making
In the retail sector, supermarket chain Iceland – one of Britain's fastest growing and most innovative food retailers – is using data and AI to enable 'business at the speed of thought'. To help surface the right store and business information to colleagues faster, Iceland uses Azure OpenAI to consolidate the organisation's knowledge base and create Genie, an app which employees use to find the information they need, conversationally.
Genie has already made a huge difference to how in-store colleagues are trained, as they can search using natural language, rather than being limited to exact terms or fuzzy matches. The answers are immediate, targeted and concise, providing a summarised response with links to the source documentation, making the experience quicker and more streamlined.
By emulating human-like reasoning and analysing vast amounts of historical and real-time data, AI can deliver new insights that help employees make smarter, better informed business decisions. This improves organisational agility by empowering employees to adapt to changing conditions faster, with immediate and intuitive access to key information. Don't wait to get started
Given the range and impact of these more innovative custom-built applications, you can see why IDC's Worldwide AI and Generative AI Spending Guide forecasts that enterprise spending on AI solutions will be five times greater than worldwide IT spending through to 2027.
Once solid data foundations are in place, the best place to start is by focusing on your organisation's most pressing needs. This could be improving customer service, optimising supply chains or enhancing decision making. Having clear objectives that tie back to your organisation's growth strategy is crucial for guiding AI proof of concept development.
However, to avoid falling prey to the innovators' dilemma, don't be afraid to dream bigger.
'Rather than selecting a single AI use case for implementation, consider taking a diverse, portfolio approach to AI adoption – developing multiple applications in parallel,' says Scott. 'This 'AI factory' approach mitigates risk, typically achieves faster time to value, and increases the chances of those 'eureka' moments from which new products and capabilities emerge.'
From enhancing customer experiences to creating entirely new solutions and services, advanced AI empowers organisations to dream bigger and achieve more. Now is the time to start unlocking the untapped value in your data and shaping a brighter future defined by innovation and growth.
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