Organizations in almost every sector have been automating processes and systems for hundreds of years. But in today’s world, the rise of AI and the generation of massive volumes of data give new opportunities to automate almost every business process.

As the use of AI accelerates globally in 2025, organizations will rethink their business models and strategic approaches. “But that’s how we’ve always done it” will cease to be the default way of doing things as organizations embrace data to automate more than ever before.

AI will reduce the time to value for many processes, creating new market opportunities and revenue streams. Senior business leaders will allocate more resources to ensure they derive the most possible value from AI projects. The interlinking of technology with business outcomes means C-suites and boards will need to become more technically knowledgeable.

That will start with boosting their understanding of how data is used. Automation that leverages AI is highly dependent on the quality of data. At no other time has the ‘garbage in, garbage out’ dictum been of greater importance.

But with AI often removing human checks, bad outputs that are created from poor inputs may not be recognized until much later. Systems will need to be designed to have automated cross-checks and guardrails to minimize the risk of errors.

On the edge of change

Edge computing, where data and computing power are held as close as possible to the user, will become increasingly important. The cost of copying, moving and storing the large volumes of data required by AI tools will drive organizations to find technology solutions that streamline operations and manage costs.

The customer experience and the customer journey throughout the whole touchpoint lifestyle will be redefined using AI as the main interface in 2025 and beyond. AI at the edge will become critical to meeting customer experience goals, which will drive massive infrastructure demand so systems can deliver the desired outcomes quickly and as accurately as possible.

One of the emerging use cases for AI has been its ability to answer complex questions. Tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Gemini have shown the potential these tools have. As organizations seek to harness this power, they will need to bring the analytical power closer to customers.

This will bring about the slow demise of chatbots. While chatbots have helped customers achieve self-service with many queries and transactions, AI will enable new customer experiences. Rather than answering a series of tedious questions, AI will enable customers to ask for a complex operation and have it executed in seconds.

In banking, a customer can simply ask for a new credit card with a specific limit as a single question. AI will interpret the request and initiate the automatic execution of credit checks, create the accounts if allowed and send a virtual card directly to the customer’s digital wallet. For a telco, a customer can simply tell an AI that they are moving to a new address, which will initiate and complete all required backend processes.

Leapfrogging the competition

These processes are all highly data dependent and will rely on organizations understanding what data they have, where it is and then finding the most efficient and effective way to get that data where it’s needed.

Data is in different places, in different formats and at variable levels of quality. That will inspire new approaches to data management and tools that enable them to access data for AI applications wherever it is. AI will be the glue that enables the automation to execute quickly and flawlessly, enabling vastly improved customer experiences.

This will be built on a decentralized data model that enables organizations to leverage many data stores, streams, lakes and databases, and use tools that coordinate and analyze the data for AI and other decision support models. Data governance will be critical for operating in this world, so organizations don’t breach regulatory obligations or damage their brand.

All of this will lead to a convergence of classical analytics, generative AI and automation, which will eventually lead to a unicorn of one – a multibillion-dollar organization that’s run by a single person. This will have a profound effect on how leaders will compete in the coming years.

Call centers will be run by automated agents, back-office operations will be completely automated, and strategic decisions will be supported or even made by highly intelligent software agents. Your next major competitor may be a single person running a highly automated, intelligent network of data-driven systems.

We will begin to see the automation of everything in 2025. This will be driven by the continued, rapid application of AI, which is highly dependent on having access to the best possible data as quickly as possible.

Leaders that understand where their data is and the potential of how it can be used to create better customer experiences will leapfrog their competition.

Opinions expressed by The CEO Magazine contributors are their own.