The world around us is changing at a rapid pace. Powerful trends – amplified and accelerated humanitarian disasters are creating a pressurized environment for many Nonprofit organizations. Your role has never been more critical than today in addressing social, environmental, and humanitarian issues. Many of you have limited resources, and your organizations are experiencing employee and donor burnout, and a myriad of other unique issues depending on your operational context. Donors expect more and trust less; and your organization must do more with less. Outdated business applications and isolated systems are making it difficult to seize new opportunities and meet changing requirements. However, new AI capabilities have massive potential - if you're able to harness them.
Business applications with AI deeply embedded (Business AI) are now able to better automate tasks such as accounting, human resources, reporting, and mission-critical activities. Business AI marks a paradigm shift in how organizations can garner insights from data, automate, and solve issues. In fact, Forrester researchers predict that enterprise AI initiatives will boost productivity and creative problem-solving by 50%, and IDC predicts that by 2026, 90% of G2000 organizations will augment operational roles with automation technology, unlocking a 30% increase in worker efficiency.
AI is already a central, integrated capability of enterprise business applications, and use cases are starting to emerge from Nonprofits who are using Business AI to become more effective. Here are three examples:
WEConnect International is a global network that connects women-owned businesses to qualified buyers around the world. The organization needed to be transformed to meet their requirements for user-friendly, secure, and scalable processes. Member buyers using the system needed to be able to search for qualified women-owned businesses quickly using keywords, and often WEConnect international employees were required to manage the searches. Due to the global nature of the organization, it was also a problem that women-owned businesses could only register using English language, and multiple forms and systems which were not secure were necessary for uploading documents during registration. WEConnect use Intelligent Robotic Process Automation to centralize and simplify the process for women-owned businesses to register, upload documents, and get certified, and to make it easier for buyers to quickly search for a product or service from qualified businesses.
As a 100% volunteer-driven, nonprofit NGO, Essen für Alle (Food for All, Switzerland) sought an efficient method to optimize its focus on feeding the food insecure. It required a method that helps ensure continuous volunteer coverage across all tasks, while effectively monitoring and managing food donations and distributions. Their volunteer shift planning and schedule management system captures, assesses, and reports volunteer data, empowering administrators to identify gaps and flexibly schedule shifts. Simultaneously, the recipient management system helps facilitate smooth distribution management through AI-enabled document extraction to scan passports, IDs and driver’s licenses and automate the registration process. When integrated together, these systems drive better shift planning and smooth distribution with more-effective tracking and control of food resources.
Diakone Nord Nord Ost is dedicated to helping people in all life circumstances in more than 100 facilities across Northern Germany. The nonprofit started using Business AI by leveraging a bundle of cloud microservices to automate and simplify the order-to-cash process in accounts receivable with machine learning. The solution helps reduce manual post-processing of incoming bank statements by applying machine learning to match open receivables to incoming bank statement items or lockbox files, to match supplier invoices to outgoing supplier-initiated payments, and to identify customer accounts for incoming payments. Introduction of these intelligent capabilities has led to a significant improvement in employee satisfaction by reducing the need for repetitive tasks and enabling employees to focus on higher value activities, resulting in more variation and productivity in their day-to-day work.
These examples provide a glimpse into what is being accomplished today. Here are some additional use cases that Business AI capabilities can provide.
Nonprofits can utilize Business AI built into finance applications with AI-powered insights, recommendations, and built-in automation. Business AI leverages advanced algorithms and machine learning to analyze large amounts of data and generate insights into financial, grants, and operational data. Organizations can use AI to identify patterns in donor behavior leading to more effective fundraising campaigns and increased donor retention.
In addition, Nonprofits could use business integrity screening to scan large volumes of data in real-time with increased accuracy to detect and prevent fraud and errors. The software helps you identify anomalous activity quickly using flexible rule sets and predictive analysis that can help uncover potential fraud patterns.
Business AI built into customer service applications can provide tailored solutions to stakeholders, making each interaction an opportunity to improve satisfaction and loyalty. Donors can engage with non-profit organizations using natural language and have simple inquiries resolved at the point of initial contact, without the need of personal interaction. Complex, higher-risk inquiries can be routed to employees who could then focus on providing effective, and personalized services.
The use of natural language (conversational analytics) is making it easier for users to make more refined queries on data. Users can measure program effectiveness and demonstrate programmatic impact to donors and stakeholders by analyzing large datasets and surfacing the most pertinent insights.
Virtual assistants embedded into business applications from HR to finance, procurement, marketing, and sales can transform the user experience – it’s like tapping your smartest colleague on the shoulder. Employees can ask a question in natural language and receive intelligent answers drawn from the data across the applications portfolio and third-party sources, retaining context. This not only reduces manual inputs but also ensures time savings, fewer errors, and enhanced efficiency through AI-driven recommendations.
It is always nice to collaborate on the art of the possible. But where should you consider starting? I recommend you consider adopting an incremental approach.
- Start with small projects: Test the feasibility and benefits of the technology and then scale as you become more comfortable. Jump-start the use of AI by investing in pre-built solutions to test out narrow use cases.
- Collaborate: Include a cross functional team in decisions and roll-out to ensure the use of technology aligns with your mission and benefits the communities you serve. Engage with other Nonprofit organizations to share knowledge and understand lessons learned.
- Safeguard: Allow for learning and adjustment along the way, minimizing risks. Fully understand the systems limitations and ensure transparency and explainabilty in AI algorithms. Ensure that the security capabilities provided by vendors ensure appropriate encryption and access controls and that you can adhere to applicable data protection regulations.
Many Nonprofit organizations need to steer the organization through disruption to achieve the best outcomes which requires both cultural and technological transformation. While the integration of AI and enterprise business applications capabilities are noteworthy, the real promise of Business AI for Nonprofits isn’t what it can do so much as the value it will create. Adding capabilities using AI models pretrained on business-relevant data will inherently provide better outcomes.
I encourage you to go visit the collection of articles on AI in the SAP Insights page or here in the community. It may provide some good insights for your organizations road ahead. Happy Reading.
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