Highlights from ACS Group’s AI in Action event

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Highlights from ACS Group’s AI in Action event

On Thursday, 13th March, we hosted our AI In Action event featuring three great speakers who shared their invaluable knowledge and experience on the application of AI in business.

The event provided insights into how businesses can integrate AI into their daily operations to help with protection and productivity. We are excited to share these insights with a broader audience.

Seabrook Crisps

Martin France, with 23 years’ experience including being Customer Development Director for the grocery channel at Mars Wrigley UK. Now the Group Sales Director of Calbee Group (Seabrook Crisps). Martin discussed leadership in the age of AI, focusing on the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry. He highlighted the challenges and opportunities AI presents, particularly in supply chain management and predicting consumer trends. Martin emphasised the importance of human involvement in decision-making despite the advancements in AI.

Highlights:

AI is a great additional support in the FMCG industry, it is increasingly being used to predict trends and manage supply chains, but human input remains crucial.

Despite AI advancements, humans are essential for cultural and conversational aspects of business – strategy, culture, vision and values.

Consumers’ expectations for personalisation and sustainability in products is increasing which AI is helping to deliver.

Some great examples of AI in the FMCG industry:

Sprite: They used AI to predict a new flavour trend based on freestyle vending machine data – leading to them developing Cherry Sprite

Unilever: They used AI to analyse social media to predict cosmetic trends which lead to direct product development.

Martin concluded by emphasising the importance of curiosity and adaptability in leadership, encouraging experimentation with AI while maintaining human oversight.

Bitdefender

Lee Omandap from Bitdefender discussed the use of AI in cybersecurity, explaining how AI can perform complex tasks and decipher patterns that are difficult for humans to recognise. He highlighted the importance of AI in identifying and mitigating cyber threats such as ransomware and phishing. Lee also emphasised the dual use of AI by both cybersecurity professionals and hackers. He provided insights into Bitdefender’s use of AI since 2008 and their managed detection and response (MDR) services.

Highlights:

AI can perform complex tasks and draw from vast amounts of knowledge.

There are different subsections of AI – including machine learning and deep learning, which help in pattern recognition and understanding end results.

Most common cyber threats:

Ransomware: AI helps identify ransomware by recognising its behaviours.
Phishing: AI generates personalised phishing attempts using data scraped from such places as social media.

Real-World Examples:

Statistics: Over half of UK businesses have experienced cyber breaches, costing roughly £11,000 for a medium sized business - costing the UK economy £44 billion over the last five years.

UK Council Ransomware Attack: A ransom notice for $600,000 and the common practice of double extortion.

Microsoft

John Whitehead discussed the results of a Work Trend Index survey conducted across 31 countries with 31,000 participants, focusing on generative AI in the workplace.

Key findings include employees’ exhaustion, their anticipation of AI handling mundane tasks, and executives’ preference for using AI to enhance efficiency rather than replace jobs. John also highlighted the widespread use of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, often without company endorsement, and the right level of business security. He introduced Microsoft’s 365 Copilot as a secure, integrated AI solution for workplace productivity.

Discussing the functionalities and benefits of Microsoft 365 Copilot, John highlighted its integration into various applications like Outlook, Teams, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, enhancing productivity, streamlining tasks, and improving workplace efficiencies.

Highlights:

Email Management: Copilot can summarise email conversations or even highlight your most important email after a holiday. It can even adjust the tone and length of messages, making email management more efficient.

Teams Meetings: Copilot provides meeting recaps, identifies key actions, and allows users to ask questions about meetings you are currently in or were late to.

Document Creation: In Word, Copilot can create proposals, FAQs, and improve documents based on user notes, acting like an assistant.

Presentation Creation: Copilot can quickly generate PowerPoint slides from Word documents, customise slides, and add animations, saving time on presentation preparation.

Data Analysis: In Excel, Copilot unlocks advanced functionalities, analyses data, creates graphs, and remodels data based on new parameters, enhancing data-driven decision-making.

Copilot Agents: These agents can automate document searches and responses, providing quick access to large amounts of information, transforming business processes.