University at Buffalo School of Management

12 Buffalo Business | BUSINESS ANALYTICS SOCIAL IMPACT OF MANAGEMENT BUSINESS OF CLIMATE CHANGE INNOVATION, ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND LEADERSHIP accounting graduates do — conducting audits and provid- ing assurances services — and it's likely that an increasing number of your clients will be using it, too." Sales and marketing insights AI is already transforming the marketing landscape, from improving the efficiency of operations to providing more engaging, personalized experiences for consumers that improve conversion rates and customer loyalty. Turner Gutmann, MBA '12, is putting AI to work in sales, finance and marketing at Autodesk, where he is technical program manager of decision science strategy. There, he is focused on scaling data science across the company, which includes assisting the sales and marketing teams to better understand and target customers. Autodesk is best known for its AutoCAD 2D and 3D modeling soware, which aids in the design of everything from buildings and cars to consumer products. Autodesk products are even used to create special effects in Hollywood films. "We're using machine learning and algorithms to help surface potential customers to our sales and customer success teams," says Gutmann. "We find customers who look like they're ready to buy a different product, custom- ers who may not be using their products enough and those for whom we feel there's growth potential. "For a salesperson to do that they'd just have to basi- cally be lucky because they couldn't brute force their way through the 10 million iterations on more than 400 customer attributes that it took the computer to figure out the most accurate way to predict a customer who's ready to grow." Charles Lindsey, associate professor of marketing, has been studying the impact of AI on market- ing and analyzing how it's already being employed by practitioners. AI helps make efficient, data- driven decisions in marketing strategies, according to Lindsey, because it can serve up personalized content based on the interactions you've had at any point of the marketing funnel: from awareness all the way to the deci- sion to purchase. "Based on predictive analytics, if we have two custom- ers at the final consideration stage, one customer is more likely to purchase if they receive one type of message, and the other is more likely with a different type of message," says Lindsey. "We've known since kindergarten that all people aren't the same," he says. "But we've never really been able to use all these different data points because it requires a lot of person power. Now, machines do it — and they're just learning. It's kind of like your money earning interest while you're sleeping." Looking ahead, Lindsey says it will be critical to put data analytics and AI in the hands of decision makers. "We need to get away from 'data-driven decision making' and flip the script to 'decision-driven data analy- sis,' where leaders tell the data scientists the decisions they We're using machine learning and algorithms to help surface potential customers to our sales and customer success teams. TURNER GUTMANN, MBA '12 Technical Program Manager of Decision Science Strategy Autodesk Gutmann Lindsey

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