The Why of AI: How to unlock this technology’s potential for your company

 If there was ever a case for embarking on a project with a clearly defined end in mind, it is building out your firm’s artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities within the framework of your current tech stack. Given the breadth of its applications, AI often is deployed as a tactical measure … to gather, analyze, automate, and execute better, faster, and more accurately. However, its real power lies in its indirect impact on your firm’s other operational elements. It has the ability to impact every aspect of your business – if you’ve designed its application with that end goal in mind.

Know your goal going in

AI not only has the ability to simplify or even eliminate labor-intensive and often mundane tasks, it can offer impressive cost savings. It can create scale and deliver unprecedented speed of execution. Workflows can also be streamlined, risk management can be enhanced, and personalization can be further expanded. Separately, these are fine outcomes. Together, they can drive unmatched synergies. Companies that have enjoyed success in utilizing AI understand that iterative advancements in AI happen when they are part of an integrated, long-range strategy and not merely a series of siloed wins. 

For example, at Cambridge, we recently built upon our existing success with generative AI to introduce the wealth management industry’s first fully agentic AI-powered account opening tool. Agentic AI tools are designed to act and make decisions with limited (or no) human input. Our internal testing established that our new “digital associates” deliver in minutes what previously took a small team over multiple days to accomplish – without compromising accuracy or precision. And, in just a few hours, the tool has the capacity to match a year’s worth of account-opening productivity. These results do not exist in a vacuum; they have positive repercussions across our entire organization. 

Importantly, it’s essential that your employees understand the firm’s goals. When your team realizes that integrating AI is designed to support rather than replace them, their initial fear will turn into enthusiasm and embracement of a tool capable of enhancing their roles and freeing up time to focus on more valuable aspects of their day-to-day. At Cambridge, we’re investing in agentic AI to help our team expand their ability to deliver personalized support to our financial professionals, elevate their skill sets, and enjoy a more fulfilling and collaborative work environment.

Ensure everyone is on board

Ultimately, firm leadership is tasked with developing, executing, and promoting a viable AI strategy that is clear, flexible, and tangible. At Cambridge, transparency is central to our value proposition, and we take great efforts to ensure our associates are part of our AI journey. They are primary stakeholders of our strategy and have both insight into our plans and input into our entire process from start to finish. Working toward our common goal, which for us was freeing up our associates to focus on more meaningful, relationship-building work and creating higher value engagement, was at the forefront during every step of the process.

The future of AI is intentional

On the surface, the rapid pace of AI innovation is a great advantage for firms. However, it’s potentially an expensive endeavor to remain current both in terms of infrastructure, integration, and expertise. Persistent challenges, including data integrity and cybersecurity, make predictions about its future applications and capabilities haphazard. There are opportunities to be captured and hurdles to overcome. The winners in the space will be firms that leverage core elements of traditional strategic planning and execution to navigate the choppy AI waters. Transparency, ongoing oversight, and adaptability are foundational. Most importantly, maintaining a clear line of sight to your ultimate goal, and understanding how AI can help you achieve it, should guide all your tactical tech stack upgrades.