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Market Intelligence

13
Jan
2025
-
5
min read

Should You Use Enterprise LLMs for Your Organization?

The days of general-use large language models (LLMs) in companies could be coming to an end. The new reality: the use of enterprise LLMs and/or small language models (SLMs) is on the rise, as businesses realize that that impactful, efficient AI must be based on tailored models that have been customized to their own data and use cases.

Nora He
,

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming industries—but how can businesses leverage large language models for real results?

Everywhere you look, AI technologies are reshaping business operations. At the core of this transformation are large language models (LLMs), which can analyze huge amounts of data, understand natural language, and generate human-like responses to user queries.

But as promising as LLMs are, enterprises face challenges like handling sensitive data, integrating with complex systems, and ensuring that solutions provide relevant and up-to-date information tailored to specific industries. Luckily, enterprise LLMs offer the customization and scalability businesses need to turn cutting-edge AI into practical solutions.

In this article, we’ll explore what makes enterprise LLMs unique, their real-world applications, and how transitioning to Small Language Models (SLMs) can bring additional value to your AI strategy.

What is an Enterprise LLM?

An enterprise LLM is a large language model tailored to meet the needs of enterprise systems. Unlike off-the-shelf LLMs, these models can:

  • Handle industry-specific requirements
  • Integrate with existing enterprise systems
  • Address challenges like data security and sensitive data management

By customizing their training data and workflows, enterprise LLMs can provide more relevant information, adapt to unique business contexts, and support decision-making at scale. These models empower organizations to use generative AI for practical, impactful applications.

For example, Ricoh, a leading printing company, implemented a specialized LLM to assist their technicians in troubleshooting equipment issues. This AI-driven approach reduced the onboarding period for new agents from 10 weeks to just two.

Key Benefits of Enterprise LLMs

Implementing LLMs seems like a massive and costly project, but the benefits they bring can far outweigh the initial investment. Here’s how Enterprise LLMs can make a difference in industries like healthcare, finance, retail, and manufacturing:

Improved Decision-Making

Effective decision-making is a critical challenge for organizations, often hindered by the overwhelming volume of data and the complexity of extracting actionable insights. Enterprise LLMs address this challenge by processing vast datasets with natural language understanding. This capability enables leaders to make data-driven decisions confidently, from identifying market trends to pinpointing operational inefficiencies.

For instance, Bloomberg developed BloombergGPT, a finance-focused LLM. This model improves financial tasks such as sentiment analysis and question-answering, allowing Bloomberg's analysts to make more informed decisions based on comprehensive data insights.

Enhanced Customer Experiences

With generative AI, Enterprise LLMs can analyze and respond to a user's query in real time, enabling personalized customer interactions through chatbots and support systems.

Operational Efficiency

Enterprise LLMs free up valuable time for teams to focus on strategic priorities by automating repetitive tasks like data entry and reporting. They integrate seamlessly into enterprise systems to optimize workflows and reduce human error.

Cost Savings

While the initial investment might be significant, the long-term savings are undeniable. Enterprise LLMs streamline operations, minimize errors, and eliminate redundant processes, thereby delivering a strong return on investment.

For instance, a study by researchers at the University of Michigan found that replacing proprietary LLMs with open-source SLMs in production environments led to cost reductions ranging from 5x to 29x, while maintaining competitive performance levels. 

Industry-Specific Applications

Enterprise LLMs shine when applied to specific business needs.

  • Finance - Automating financial reporting and ensuring compliance.
  • Supply Chain - Optimizing inventory and improving logistics.
  • HR - Enhancing talent acquisition and streamlining employee management.
Source: "Leveraging LLMs for Enhanced Human Resource Management."

These benefits demonstrate how large language models can move beyond theory into transformative real-world results.

Top Use Cases for Enterprise LLMs

Enterprise LLMs address complex challenges and unlock new opportunities for innovation. Here are some of the most impactful use cases for Enterprise LLMs across key sectors:

Healthcare

Source: "How AI in Healthcare Improves Patient Care in 2025."

Enterprise LLMs are reshaping healthcare by simplifying patient record analysis and enabling personalized treatment plans. The AI in healthcare market has seen exponential growth, expanding from $1.1 billion in 2016 to $22.4 billion by 2023, reflecting the growing reliance on AI-driven solutions. It was also reported that AI-assisted surgeries could shorten hospital stays by over 20%, with potential savings of $40 billion annually.

Retail

In retail, LLMs are used to improve inventory management and provide tailored customer recommendations. For instance, Amazon uses LLMs to enhance product recommendations by understanding "common sense" relationships, ensuring that suggestions align more closely with customer queries.

The use of AI in retail is anticipated to grow at an impressive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30.5% between 2021 and 2028. 

Finance

The finance industry leverages LLMs for tasks like fraud detection, compliance verification, and financial forecasting. Analysts predict that generative AI could contribute an additional $340 billion to the operating profits of the U.S. banking sector.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing benefits from LLM-powered predictive maintenance and streamlined operational planning. The global market for AI in computer vision, a critical tool for manufacturing automation, is projected to reach $100 billion by 2032.

Human Resources

LLMs improve HR processes, including talent acquisition, onboarding, and analyzing employee sentiment. Notably, 75% of companies now use AI-driven tools for talent acquisition.

These trends highlight the expanding role of Enterprise LLMs across industries, paving the way for smarter, more efficient systems.

Challenges of Implementing Enterprise LLMs

Organizations often face several hurdles when implementing enterprise LLMs. Here’s a breakdown of the most common challenges and actionable solutions:

High Initial Investment

Building or adopting Enterprise LLMs requires significant upfront costs, including infrastructure, licensing, and customization. For instance, OpenAI's ChatGPT model reportedly incurs operational costs of up to $700,000 daily due to expensive server requirements. However, these costs can be mitigated by starting with pilot projects. This approach allows organizations to test feasibility, measure return on investment (ROI), and scale up gradually based on proven results. 

Data Privacy Concerns

Handling sensitive data should be a top priority for enterprises, especially when deploying models interacting with proprietary or confidential information. In order to ensure security and to build trust, it's imperative that enterprises choose solutions with robust data encryption and compliance with industry standards (such as GDPR or HIPAA, to ensure security and build trust).

Integration Complexity

Integrating LLMs into existing enterprise systems can be challenging, especially for organizations without deep expertise in AI development. Partnering with experienced AI vendors like Arcee AI can ease this process by ensuring smooth integration and alignment with organizational goals.

Lack of AI Expertise in Teams

Many organizations struggle with limited in-house expertise to manage and optimize AI technologies. Invest in training programs and adopt user-friendly tools to allow your team to use Enterprise LLMs effectively. This improves adoption rates and ensures long-term success.

By addressing these challenges, you will minimize risks and maximize the value of enterprise LLMs.

Enterprise LLM vs SLMs: Which One Should You Use?

Enterprise LLMs offer vast capabilities to tackle complex problems. However, small language models (SLMs) are emerging as a better and more practical alternative for businesses looking to streamline their AI strategies. In terms of performance, SLMs can be just as good, if not better, than LLMs. Where LLMs bring power and generalization, SLMs deliver focus, efficiency, and precision—traits that are increasingly essential in agentic AI workflows. Agentic AI workflows refer to AI-driven processes designed to autonomously adapt, make decisions, and optimize outcomes in dynamic environments.

What Are SLMs?

SLMs are streamlined versions of LLMs designed to handle specific tasks with high efficiency. While LLMs are trained on hundreds of billions or even trillions of tokens, SLMs operate with significantly fewer parameters, often under 72 billion. This substantial difference in size makes SLMs lightweight and far less demanding in terms of computational power.

These characteristics make SLMs ideal for applications where agility, cost-efficiency, and speed are priorities.

Benefits of SLMs

  • Energy Efficiency - SLMs consume significantly less energy compared to LLMs, aligning with sustainability goals and reducing operational costs.
  • Task-Specific Optimization - By focusing on narrowly defined tasks, SLMs deliver higher accuracy and faster results without the unnecessary complexity of larger models.
  • Enhanced Data Security - With a smaller scope, SLMs are easier to audit and secure, reducing the risk of exposing sensitive data.
  • Scalability - Their lightweight design allows organizations to scale AI solutions across multiple workflows without overwhelming their infrastructure.

Arcee AI, the pioneer in small language models, has provided organizations with specialized AI solutions that deliver unmatched data security, resource efficiency, and performance. Dedicated to transforming the way companies operate in an increasingly digital landscape, Arcee AI helps teams handle complex tasks and solve operational problems with purpose-built SLMs tailored to their business, data and workflows. Our groundbreaking training techniques, developed in-house, differentiate our models, especially for organizations with domain-specific needs tied to impactful business results.

TL;DR

Enterprise LLMs offer customized solutions to improve decision-making, enhance customer experiences, and streamline workflows. While challenges like high initial costs and integration complexity exist, a strategic approach—defining goals, starting small, and involving stakeholders—can unlock their full potential.

As AI continues to evolve, incorporating tools like SLMs into agentic AI workflows adds even greater efficiency and focus to ensure your organization stays ahead.

Ready to transform your organization with AI? Book a demo with Arcee AI and take the first step today!

FAQs

What is an enterprise LLM?

An enterprise LLM is a large language model customized for enterprise-level applications. It offers tailored solutions for decision-making, customer engagement, and operational efficiency.

What is the meaning of LLM in business?

In business, LLM stands for large language model, a type of AI that processes natural language to generate insights, automate tasks, and improve workflows.

How many companies are using LLMs?

More than 67% of organizations globally use generative AI products powered by LLMs. With over 300 million companies worldwide, this demonstrates the extensive adoption of LLMs, including by nonprofits, for tasks like content creation and language processing.

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