8 Steps To A Successful AI Adoption Strategy
Artificial intelligence (AI) is constantly evolving, and businesses are rushing to become early adopters of this technology rather than take the risk of being left behind. Also, advances in cloud technology and relevant ease of expenditure in the recent five years, have attracted business investments in new technologies.
And this is where AI comes in. With a large chunk of investments in the cloud, businesses are moving towards automation and machine learning technology.
Building “Right” AI implementation
Every organization has the potential to advance its operations with the “right” AI implementation. The word “right” is emphasized because many times, organizations make the mistake of using a “going all-in-a rush” strategy to implement AI and fail to get the required business outcomes.
A successful AI implementation requires a clear long-term strategy and not a hurried overnight execution. Listed below are 8 key steps for a successful AI adoption strategy for your organization.
- Understand what is AI and why you need it
An essential first step for a business is to familiarize itself with AI and its capabilities. A clear and concrete understanding of the AI model and its use cases is necessary, especially for the CXOs and senior executives of any business. You can also refer to several online resources to get started:
- Google’s open-source (OS) TensorFlow software library for machine intelligence
- AI Resources, an open-source code directory from the AI Access Foundation
- Stanford University’s online lectures: Artificial Intelligence: Principles and Techniques
- Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk’s Future of Life Institute
- OpenAI, an open industry, and academia-wide deep-learning initiative
This awareness and knowledge building will help in identifying AI-based applications that can bring business value to the enterprise.
2. Identify the areas where AI can help you
The next step is identifying use cases relevant to the business, a choice between enhancing the customer experience with improved products/services or integrating automation in existing systems/processes to improve productivity. Please focus on business problems at hand that AI can help solve. Most of the time, you may understand AI but lose sight of how it will benefit your organization.
3. Ensure Management support
Every major transformation exercise in an organization requires leadership support so, they must be aware of the advantages, risks, investments, and business value that AI adoption will fetch. Only if the management is convinced, you can successfully deliver the AI strategy across the team resulting in a smoother and quicker implementation.
4. Adopt a data-driven culture
Data is very important in today’s times, both the quality and quantity of data. The success of an AI strategy depends on the quality of data that trains and fuels AI algorithms suited to your business. Also, you must carry out accurate data labeling, otherwise, AI will deliver incorrect results.
5. Internal capabilities versus External experts
Advanced technologies like Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, etc. need to be identified. Businesses should evaluate in-house expertise in these technologies or reach out to external experts for solution development. It is also essential that an organization evaluates its existing infrastructure before the adoption of an AI strategy.
6. Start Small
It is better to start small and apply AI to small pilot projects based on specific business problems than to take on big and complex tasks in the beginning. A successful AI strategy is built on a long-term vision and a group of well-tested plans.
7. Ensure proper governance and ethics adoption
While implementing AI, businesses should work with proper governance, trust, and ethics. Data should be accurate and highly curated. Ensure information security and privacy with critical decision handling by humans rather than a robot. Algorithms should be transparent to inspire trust.
8. Keep the strategy unique
Any transformation adopted to optimize business value is successful only if you do things differently and stay ahead of the competition. Know that innovation and a unique strategy will help in building a competitive advantage.
Final Thoughts
The current trends show that AI adoption is expected to increase significantly in the next three-five years. With the recent challenges of remote work and data security, AI and its associated technologies are being implemented by many businesses as they recognize its benefits. What matters and is a clear differentiator, is a well-formulated plan and a commitment to adopt the AI and ML technology.
We, at PLM Nordic, can help you build innovative digital experiences with our AI and ML services. Our team of experts will assist you in all development stages to create a unique AI-based solution that ensures the necessary competitive advantage. Visit us at https://www.plmnordic.com/ai-ml-services/ or you can email us at info@plmnordic.com