From Investment to Impact: Unleashing the Business Value of Data and AI
Insights for Business Leaders from the 2025 Data and AI Leadership Forum
No matter the industry, the influence of AI extends far beyond the technical realm of CTOs or engineering managers. It’s now crucial for today’s business leaders to focus on the tangible, real-world impact of data and AI and how it accelerates a range of business outcomes. When it comes to supercharging revenue streams, enhancing customer experiences, optimizing complex supply chains and much more, mastering data and AI is now the differentiator that gives leading organizations an edge to drive growth.
Snowflake’s recent Data and AI Leadership Forum featured insights from business leaders including Vijay Balaji, Managing Director at BlackRock; Ryan Thomas, AWS Specialist and Partners, WW Industries Leader at AWS; Amit Bansal, Global Data Business Lead at Accenture; Jim Rowan, Principal, Head of AI at Deloitte; and Sinclair Schuller, Americas Responsible AI Leader at EY; plus Snowflake’s Chief Revenue Officer, Mike Gannon; Chief Information Officer Mike Blandina; and SVP of Alliances and Channels, Chris Niederman. Audiences could choose from a variety of sessions covering the real-world simplicity of AI, technology’s role in accelerating business outcomes, the power of the connected ecosystem and the impact of data and AI on the workforce and customer experience.
The key takeaway? AI is no longer just about technology; it’s about strategy.
Three main themes emerged from the expertise and advice offered at the leadership forum:
The foundational necessity of a unified data strategy: A robust, unified data foundation is a prerequisite for any successful AI initiative. Snowflake executives emphasized the need to break down data silos to create a “single source of truth” and to establish a governed data ecosystem. Deloitte’s Jim Rowan discussed strategies for integrating first- and third-party data sources, working with multimodal data inputs and developing data trust and governance. This foundational work enables key outcomes and the responsible adoption of AI by incorporating security, compliance and governance from the start.
The importance of a democratized data strategy and connected, collaborative ecosystem: Solutions rarely come from a single source or partner and often involve multiparty collaborations internally and with cloud providers, technology partners and systems integrators. Sinclair Schuller from EY spoke about data democratization, where business leaders can self-serve and innovate. This helps partners bring specialized expertise, technical skills and jointly developed solutions to accelerate customer outcomes, help ensure security and compliance and help businesses differentiate themselves in the market.
Practical applications of AI to drive efficiency in business operations: AI has moved beyond hype to delivering tangible business value, which Amit Bansal at Accenture discussed in more detail. That includes improving operational efficiency and transforming core business functions such as product development, go-to-market strategies and supply chain management. Business leaders can implement data and AI to achieve real-world results, with examples at the event from various industries including healthcare (Alberta Health Services), financial services (BlackRock) and media and entertainment (Acxiom).
Beyond tech: AI for both human impact and business growth
The solutions, collaboration and governance from the themes above offer demonstrated business outcomes, but they also have a human impact.
"It's exciting to see the tech at work,” Mike Gannon said during the leadership forum keynote session. “It's more exciting to see the impact it has on lives." The stories of AI’s real-world human impact from the keynote included the potential of AI to help solve global challenges such as curing diseases. Siemens is another example of an organization using AI to improve lives: AI can enable automotive driver assist systems that impact safety for drivers and passengers. And for safety in the digital world, responsible AI can also manage brand protection against fake content, combating misinformation or harmful content.
AI also offers benefits that blend improved human experiences with business value. In the keynote, Chris Niederman cited examples such as Jet2's use of AI for customer sentiment analysis from call transcripts, or Booking.com's collaboration with AWS, Snowflake and Immuta to scale its data platform and enhance security.
It’s likely that anyone who’s part of the AI discussion has been exposed to the fear of AI taking people’s jobs. Further themes in the keynote addressed this, including AI’s impact on the workforce and culture. The panel argued that AI will instead augment human capabilities, leading to job evolution and increased efficiency. They stressed the importance of "AI literacy" and incorporating guardrails to prevent "hallucinations" or errors in AI systems, especially in highly regulated industries.
AI-informed timing means smarter harvests, sweeter returns
Ryan Thomas from AWS, shared a fascinating story about peach harvesting to help audiences digest the business benefits of data and AI in a nontechnical way.
Traditional peach harvesting focused on two factors: achieving the right color for market appeal and ensuring adequate water for taste. Data analysis revealed a surprising insight: harvesting a peach creates trauma that causes the next peach to require five times more water to grow. However, when harvested at sunset, the subsequent peach needs only one and a half times the typical water amount. This discovery, made possible through AI and data analysis, has significant implications. "That is a huge, huge, huge cost reduction for our customers, faster peach production for their customers and a faster time to market," Thomas said. "But you also have a really cool sustainability story, because now it takes a lot less water to grow these peaches. And it's a really great supply chain story."
A connected ecosystem for unified and simplified collaboration
The strategic collaboration between AWS and Snowflake demonstrates the value of robust partnerships. With deep service integrations spanning data engineering, analytics, AI, applications and collaboration, AWS and Snowflake work together to help customers unlock more value from their data. These integrations enable enterprises across industries to seamlessly ingest, transform and analyze structured, semi-structured and unstructured data for their analytics and AI workloads, while leveraging the security, scalability and reliability of AWS.
Snowflake on AWS provides comprehensive compliance features, robust security controls and extensive capabilities to help customers meet regulatory requirements across their AI initiatives. This helps highly regulated customers in healthcare, financial services, energy and other industries streamline their compliance efforts while maintaining their security and governance responsibilities.
Learn more about how Snowflake and AWS are helping organizations across industries unify their data and AI strategy.
A strategic roadmap for gaining value from AI
The Data and AI Leadership Forum, now available for viewing on demand, offers practical strategies for every business leader. Attendees can learn how to build a unified data foundation, enable data democratization across their organization and leverage a connected ecosystem to deliver measurable value. Whatever your industry, these on-demand sessions will provide the strategic roadmap you need to move from experimentation to impact and to confidently start your data and AI successes.
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