Leslie Caroline Le Meunier-FitzHugh

As far back as the industrial revolution, significant development in technical innovation has succeeded in transforming numerous manual tasks and processes that had been in existence for decades where humans had reached the limits of physical capacity. Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers this same transformative potential for the augmentation and potential replacement of human tasks and activities within a wide range of industrial, intellectual and social applications. The pace of change for this new AI technological age is staggering, with new breakthroughs in algorithmic machine learning and autonomous decision-making, engendering new opportunities for continued innovation. The impact of AI could be significant, with industries ranging from: finance, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, supply chain, logistics and utilities, all potentially disrupted by the onset of AI technologies. The study brings together the collective insight from a number of leading expert contributors to highlight the significant opportunities, realistic assessment of impact, challenges and potential research agenda posed by the rapid emergence of AI within a number of domains: business and management, government, public sector, and science and technology. This research offers significant and timely insight to AI technology and its impact on the future of industry and society in general, whilst recognising the societal and industrial influence on pace and direction of AI development.

The aim of this book is to discuss how corporate sales and marketing functions can operate collaboratively. Although effective sales and marketing interactions are critical to achieving organizational goals, their practical working relationship is frequently described as being unsatisfactory. Sales and marketing have developing their own perceptions of what should be achieved and how it can be realized. Because of the differences that exist between sales and marketing, the exploration of the issues and possible solutions to the sales and marketing dilemma offers an exciting opportunity for practitioners and academics, both in the context of management, and training and development programs, to deliver superior customer value. We will explore how sales and marketing can become more competitive in the face of dynamic and borderless markets, where lead generation is less important than building long-term relationships with customers. The book considers the follow areas related to the sales and marketing interface: How the crises in the sales and marketing interface became established. How alignment between sales and marketing can be achieved in lead generation. Consideration of the formal and informal methods of communication that can assist in establishing inter-functional collaboration. How collaboration between sales and marketing can improve customer relationships. The role of senior management in improving sales and marketing working relationships, and the optimization of the sales and marketing interface.