The promise and ultimate goal of artificial Intelligence is to make machine intelligent. With advancement in machine learning, statistical reasoning and pattern recognition, as well as the exponential growth in big data and computing power, AI has become the front and center of technological innovation and business transformation in the second decade of 21 century and beyond. In this respect, AI is perfectly aligned to the goal of business Intelligence, which is to make business more intelligent by augmenting and, in some cases, automating human intelligence. As AI is getting smarter, it is not unreasonable to expect that BI will too. Traditionally, BI, along with data warehousing and big data technologies, provides systems, tools and processes to help companies harness data from disparate sources and turn them into high quality and actionable information to drive competitive advantage.

Business intelligence--the strategies and tech companies use to collect, interpret and utilize data--plays a primary role in informing the strategies, functions and efficiency of a company. However, as essential to a company's success as BI is, many businesses don't take advantage of the tools that can improve their BI efforts. Combining machine learning with BI can have a far-reaching impact on the insights a business gets from its available data, making BI a true game-changer in helping companies improve productivity, quality, customer service and more. Below, 12 members ofForbes Technology Council explore the ways businesses can use machine learning to improve BI. Machine learning has the ability to improve many operational processes, such as customer service, finance, marketing and much more.