An Exploratory Review on the Role and Relevance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools for Informed Decision-Making in Key Areas of Business

An Exploratory Review on the Role and Relevance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools for Informed Decision-Making in Key Areas of Business

Prof. Subramani Joghee Mathan

Department of Cooperative Studies

College of Business & Economics, P.O.Box. No:138 Haramaya University, Ethiopia

Mr. Erana Terefa Yimar

Assistant Professor & Head, Department of Cooperative Studies,

College of Business & Economics, P.O.Box. No:138 Haramaya University, Ethiopia

Abstract – Innovative business decision-making solutions by using technological tools go a long way in improving business competence, restructure processes and drive radical development. Despite the presence of an array of such tools in vogue, there was a need of the hour to choose the best among them for efficient and effective business decisions. With this prime intent in mind, this study was considered timely. This review is exploratory in nature, and the analysis is based on essential contents extracted from eighteen relevant and recent critical sources written by competent authorities in the specific field. The objectives of this study were: to explain the meaning of Artificial Intelligence (AI); to explore their role and relevance in informed decision- making related to the key areas of business; and to recommend productive suggestions for the effective utilization of these all AI tools in the key areas of business. The findings reveals that, of all existing business decision-making tools developed over the years, the emergence of fifteen outsmarting Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools of recent origin is spectacularly awesome, and outsmarting in key business processes related to core fields like marketing (Miro, Filestage, Buffer), sales (Salesforce Einstein, Outreach, and Regie.ai), HR (SeekOut, Peoplebox.ai, and Humanforce), customer service (HubSpot Service Hub, Help Scout, and Gorgios), and operation management (Monday, Odoo, and Scoro). For their effective utilization in business, the study suggests creation of awareness about these tools for the businessmen to appreciate them and accept them, and developing their passion to learn and handle them is of paramount importance, for their sustained productivity.

Keywords: Exploratory Review, Role and Relevance, Artificial Intelligence Tools, Informed Decision-Making, Key Areas of Business

INTRODUCTION TO AI AND BUSINESS DECISION-MAKING

Businesses, continuously seek innovative decision-making solutions to improve their competence, restructure processes and drive development. Over the years, there were many radical changes in the usage of technological tools for business decision-making. Of all, the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (hereafter called as AI) for business decisions is spectacular. AI is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems (Lev Craig, 2024), in several spheres in general and key business areas in particular. The rapid developments in AI aids the process of informed decision making by evaluating the data and variables in diverse intricate circumstances.

Importance of AI Tools for the Key Areas of Business

We are living in an era of technology where, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has its imprints in every sphere of life, and each key area of business like marketing, sales, HR, customer service, and operation management is not an exemption, and the emerging insights elaborating the vital contributions of AI tools related to these core business areas could be of paramount importance to the productive welfare of business circles for emulation, which gave the real impetus for writing this article titled, An Exploratory Review on the Role and Relevance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools for Informed Decision Making in Key Areas of Business. Hence, the study.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This study is exploratory in nature, and the analysis is based on essential contents extracted from eighteen relevant and recent critical literature reviews written by competent authorities in the specific field.

The Objectives of the Study

The objectives of this study were:

To explain the meaning of Artificial Intelligence;

To explore the role and relevance of the AI tools in informed decision-making related to the key areas of business; and To recommend productive suggestions for the effective utilization of these all AI tools in the key areas of business.

THE FEAR OF MACHINE REPLACING MEN- A MYTH OR REALITY

While AI facilitates firms and institutions to arrive at swift, and well-informed decisions, human wisdom and judgement, cannot be just like that ruled out, which is evident from the men manning deep learning system for deciphering search prompts and provide personalized results in Google, time and resource saving innovation from IBM think tanks optimizing instant decision making process, Microsoft team tackling provision of wider range of information to address worlds biggest challenges with ease, Deloittes automated decision making processes paving way for predicting and simulating future outcomes for human use, and Salesmen using AI for gaining added insights on customer-behavior and their patterns of buying.

Katie Garrett (2025) lists fifteen important AI Tools widely used in five key areas of business, namely, Marketing, Sales, HR, Customer Service, and in Operation Management. In Marketing, Miro, Filestage, Buffer like Tools play pivotal role. In Sales, Salesforce Einstein, Outreach, and Regie.ai like tools are vital. As to Human Resources, SeekOut, Peoplebox.ai, and Humanforce like tools are predominant. For Customer Services, HubSpot Service Hub, Help Scout, and Gorgios like tools play a critical role. And in relation to Operations Management, Monday, Odoo, and Scoro are few notable tools. Hereunder, lets shed light on the role and relevance of these tools in efficient decision making in the five key areas of business aforementioned, as it is considered necessary for giving required insights for the existing business circles and emerging business aspirants for arriving at informed decision-making related to key areas of business, which would go a long way in enhancing their business performance by ensuring better productivity and profitability.

The Role and Relevance of AI Tools in Informed Decision Making Related to Five Key Areas of Business

The following are the relevant AI tools playing a significant role in arriving at informed decision-making related to the five key areas of business such as marketing, sales, HR, customer service and in operation management.

AI TOOLS IN THE MARKETING DECISIONS

In Marketing, the importance of AI tools such as Miro, Filestage and Buffer have telling effects for firms. MIRO ai, is a leading online collaborative whiteboard platform, has developed a comprehensive Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy that emphasizes cross- department collaboration, involving product managers, marketing specialists, sales representatives, and customer support agents working together to align and enable various stakeholders for effective strategy execution. Further, it gathers and analyzes customer feedback from various sources viz., surveys and social media, in order to sustain the GTM strategy, and to stay attuned to the needs and preferences of their users, allowing more targeted and effective marketing efforts (Find Your Audience, 2024).

Filestage ai, serves as a content review and approval platform, which permits creative marketing teams, agencies, and media concerns to team up on and approve digital assets like text documents, videos and images, and enables feedback by way of observtions and notes. It gives way for approvals at various levels (Matei, 2025).

Buffer ai, on the other hand, is a new social media marketing management software typically tailored for small commercial firms, very much useful in scheduling their posts, examining their results and engaging with their prospective clientele. This catalyst app for a new paradigm in social media marketing earned four million users- both free and paid subscribers, worldwide (Hakes, 2024).

AI TOOLS IN THE SALES DECISIONS

In Sales, AI tools namely, Salesforce Einstein, Outreach, and Regie.ai play an undeniably laudable role.

Salesforce Einstein ai throws valuable insights to empower the salesforce in maintaining harmonious customer-relations. It suggests rewarding recommendations, guarantees glowing guesses and out-of-the ideas, uncovers unseen intuitions and patterns in data, automates business processes and workflows, and keeps the salesforce updated about the upcoming opportunities and threats, for enhanced sales performance (sharma, 2019).

Outreach ai is a sales execution platform serving sales mavens with an at-a-glance overview of closed, ongoing and prospective deals, encompassing the date of deal, anticipated close, expected deal size and impact, and emerging avenues to get connected to them further. Further, it does multiple facets of sellers job including sales coaching, deal management and sales forecasting (Morgan, 2025).

Regie.ai automates efficient, timely, engaging and impactful content creation and personalization based on audience insights and behavioral data, boosts hyper-relevant and engaging sales and marketing outreach through automated and optimized email sequences, social media posts, and customizable templates, guarantees coordination and cooperation between sales and marketing teams, effortlessly integrates with Customer relationship and sales management platforms (Leadspicker, 2025).

AI TOOLS IN THE HR DECISIONS

In HR Decisions, ai tools such as, SeekOut, Peoplebox.ai, and Humanforce are of paramount importance.

SeekOut ai, is a platform designed for internal talent management, continuous employee training, and upskilling (Liao, 2024). With its inbuilt algorithms, externally, it can locate the right candidate from the vast datasets based on skills, experience and related factors, suggests closely relevant job titles and skills, generates outreach messages for the right person. And internally, within the organisation, it can identify the internal skills and talents for emerging openings, traces gaps for further skill building.

Peoplebox.ai, with its inbuilt tools and system design, serves as a platform for augmenting team alignment for improved business efficiency. This is achieved by way of tracking the team-based objectives, key results, and performance, binding the teams in tact and enhancing their performance by expediting the process of execution (Insights, 2025).

Humanforce ai is a workforce asset management (WAM) technology has workforce analytics that provides critical real-time data for strategic human resource planning and forecasting. It provides for survey-tools that tracks employee sentiments and reports key drivers impacting retention and attrition rates. Further, the Thrive Well-being Module embedded in it is focused towards attracting and retaining skilled workforce by extending employee benefits and welfare measures to encourage more involved and robust teams for continuous and exceptional employee engagement, performance alignment, and growth, thereby helping organizations create an exceptional employee experience that aligns with institutions strategic goals and vision, which boosts their morale and productivity. It also provides for potentially secure, accurate, automated employee records management and enterprise payroll solutions for timely payments (NavTo.AI, 2025)

AI TOOLS IN THE CUSTOMER SERVICE DECISIONS

For Customer Services related decisions, HubSpot, Service Hub, Help Scout, and Gorgios like tools play a predominant role.

HubSpot Service Hub ai, is a leading Customer Platform that aids businesses connect and grow better, by tracking the (core customer Use Cases for each Product Line) ways that customers perceive the product-value and enhancing it for further value- addition for customers (Shah, 2024).

Help Scout ai is a client support platform designed for teams aiming to manage customer interactions proficiently, by delivering seamless support experiences, through features such as shared inboxes, knowledge bases, live chat, and robust reporting (kore.ai, Inc, 2025).

Gorgios ai empowers integrated ecommerce traders and their brands to grow through AI-powered customer experience. During every client communication session, it enables automated personalized responses on every channel, at every hour, for every question by cross-checking the auto-saved earlier rich-customer data like earlier orders placed, reviews or subscription made in detail, in the sidebar (domaine, n.d.).

AI TOOLS IN OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

And in relation to Operations Management Decisions, Monday, Odoo, and Scoro are few notable tools.

Monday ai segments and filters data by type and utmost priority; swiftly extracts and exports required data format wherever required; detects and segregates sentiments into positive, negative and neutral and accordingly decide further steps to be taken; skulls out and summarizes key facts from complex readings and suggests immediate actions; and serves as an accurate translator of any global language for localization (Coleman, 2025).

Odoo ai automates repetitive tasks like placing purchase orders while inventory level drops below a certain threshold; arrives at critical business decisions confidently by drawing real-time predictive insights from vast array of itemized past data, for instance, forecasting the right time to adjust product prices based on past sales records, customer preferences and market trends; ensures enhanced customer experience by tracking their sentiments and to drive business in tune with it; critically analyzes processes and suggests corrective measures for streamlining enhanced operational efficiency (OEC, 2025).

Scoro ai enables efficient management of project, time-tracking, finance, team collaboration, and real-time dashboards for better decision making, better processes control, increased productivity and profitability (Uddin, 2024).

Measures Suggested for Effective Use of AI Tools for Informed Decision-Making Related to Key Areas of Business

In order to make effective utilization of AI tools for informed decision making related to key areas of business, the following measures are suggested:

Its of paramount importance that businessmen should have a complete understanding of all these specific AI tools meant for each key area of business;

In addition to that, it calls for a positive attitude among the business circles to mentally prepare themselves to willfully accept and rely on AI tools for making productive decisions in key areas of business; and

The last, but not the least, it is also equally important that those business aspirants should develop a passion to learn the fundamental procedures in handling of these user-friendly AI Tools.

To put it in a nutshell, business circles should develop a complete understanding and acceptance of and a consistent passion for putting AI tools into practice for arriving at informed decision making related to key spheres of business for sustained productivity and profitability.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Before concluding the paper, it is pertinent to note that even though AI tools occupy a predominant place in making informed decisions related to key spheres of business, factors like affordability to purchase paid version of AI, having enough exposure for comprehending them, and the level of efficiency in handling them still remain a big challenge for the business cirlces. Giving due attention to get required eposure to and gaining hands-on-experience in efficiently handling these tools backed with willingness to use and ability to pay will, of course, bring substantial and sustainable increment in business productivity and profitability in all those aforesaid key spheres of business.

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