Businesses do! In partnership with technology and AI specialists.
I've had the opportunity to work with many business and technology leaders in both commercial and government organizations, all of whom have the successful development and implementation of an AI strategy as their primary short-term goal. Some of these organizations are already well on their way to implementing and moving to more AI-powered business models, while others are really just defining what their strategy should be. Some organizations have implemented more tactical AI solutions to address specific pain points.
Regardless of where an organization is in its AI journey, the struggle that virtually all customers struggle with as they begin to implement an AI strategy is who will create the necessary development of the strategy and supporting capabilities? It's about owning and coordinating what you provide.
Although AI is often considered a technical field that requires a deep understanding of a wide range of topics including data, machine learning, analytics, and DevOps-type capabilities, defining an AI strategy should be part of the technology team with the CTO. It is considered as a thing. A new role is created to support AI and someone similar to the CTO is asked to define her AI strategy. Place AI firmly in his IT and technology areas of these organizations.
In my experience, relying on IT to drive your AI strategy does not provide the best return on investment for your business. IT teams are usually very good at optimization and coming up with approaches to apply AI to specific flows. pain points. This can often be a low hanging fruit solution. Of course, it's a great place to start building momentum around AI and hopefully achieve operational efficiency and improved customer service, but is it the right area for your organization to focus on? , requires deep business knowledge of the future organizational landscape.
Getting diverse stakeholders to agree on what to order for lunch can often be difficult, let alone who owns what. So I like to start simple. Create a simple, old-fashioned style of his RACI with an open and direct round table. Figure 1 shows an example of RACI where all roles agree and operate accordingly. RACI defines who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed about her AI strategy.
Figure 1 — Creating RACI for your AI strategy
In my opinion, the first important task, “Aligning AI strategy to business objectives,” requires business leaders to be responsible for executing this task and responsible for successfully completing this task. It should be defined as having both an Accountable and responsible person. Roles such as technology leadership or “AI coach” are often asked to act as external consultants like myself, are key stakeholders, and require expertise on the overall strategy . Businesses own their strategies.
Successful digital transformation examples from the past decade have shown that technology is just one part of the journey, and people and processes, all driven by business alignment, are key ingredients for success. . AI strategies should take a similar approach, but where the biggest opportunities and resulting threats are directly related to core business models, I believe business and technology need to work even more closely together. claim.
My advice is to be very focused on both short-term and long-term AI goals, build a value-driven business AI use case portfolio, and ensure that an agreed and published RACI is widely available, no matter how difficult it is to create. The goal is to make it permeate society.
