Firstly, do plan to adopt AI-enabled capabilities.
Organizations that don’t start to engage with new concepts will fall behind in skills and competitiveness. These tools and features are not yet very mature. Expect maybe 50% failure where the value doesn’t fit your organizational need, but with that will come 50% that will. So do get involved.
So what sort of AI capabilities are there?
Broadly speaking, the AI landscape can be broken into solutions and features that:
Analyze data and make recommendations. This tends to be the easiest to implement.
Take action, either on request or independently. Often this is closely connected with automation tools.
Communicate. Here the natural language/conversational/AI pieces come to play.
Of course, sometimes you can also combine all three of the above.
Next, where are you getting those AI capabilities from?
Consider Built-In AI vs. Add-On AI vs. DIY AI.
Built-in AI is the easiest to adopt. However, remember that an expert vendor in, say, service management, may not be an expert vendor in AI and ML. There is a higher chance that their AI features are light or lower-value.
Then there are add-on AI vendors that – for example – may provide a chatbot that plugs into your automation or service management tools. These add-on AI tools are more expert and are more likely to carry greater feature power and value. But they’ll almost certainly cost you considerably more.
Third, there is the DIY AI build-it-yourself model. The value here is that your organization can learn how to use machine learning models and really take unique benefit, but this is a very significant investment and carries very heavy overheads.
Finally, implement in small steps for AI success.
Identify the best use cases and target these only. Phase introduction. Be aware of the culture of your organization.
Go point by point, use case by use case, and control target audiences until you’re sure it’ll work for you and your culture.
But don’t hold back. This innovation tide is already pulling ahead of many of us, and the water is rising fast. Better get in there and start swimming.
When it comes to #AI, you should implement it in small steps. Identify the best use cases and target those only. Phase introduction. Be aware of the culture of your organization, says @IanAitchison.