The 5 pillars of successfully introducing AI

When we hear the term "artificial intelligence," we often think of robots, which would also serve as companionship as they would discuss important topics with us and have their own opinion. However, in recent years AI has evolved and can help not only people but businesses to thrive. What to consider before implementing AI solutions to your business? There are 5 key factors, which you have to think about before finding the best AI solutions according to your needs and requirements.??

The history of artificial intelligence?

In the first half of the 20th century, concepts like AI were confined to the realms of science fiction and pop culture, resulting movies like Star Wars, through droids and robots. The term artificial intelligence was coined in the 1950s, and the pace of development has been accelerated. One brilliant young mind must be mentioned in the history of AI, Alan Turing, who calculated the mathematical possibility of artificial intelligence. He suggested that machines should be capable of solving problems and making decisions just like humans. Back then, computers were just introduced to the world at a very high price: the cost was 200.000 dollars/month to lease a computer, which must have been the reason why Turing did not start to put his words into action.??

From the inception of AI to today's advancements like Microsoft's OpenAI, AI's capabilities have expanded significantly. We can compose music with AIVA or draw pictures with DALL-E. Thinking about AI nowadays doesn’t include robot-human interaction anymore – it’s about generating and creating original texts, posts, music or pictures without any skill or experience. But AI can be more than that: it is based on probabilities, and using machine learning it can automatically learn and adapt to new data. AI can perform tasks and can support decision-making or language translation. It can even help in making business decisions or support reaching objectives, KPIs or analysing data.???

How to use AI for our business decisions??

AI is everywhere – it’s behind most of the business decisions. In the age of data and big data, banking, marketing, and entertainment all use artificial intelligence. Algorithms decide what we should see in our social media feeds, driverless cars are on the road and machines are calling us exactly like sales representatives did 10 years ago. Implementing AI solutions can be challenging and even time-consuming if you are not ready to choose the solutions based on your needs. Let’s see the 5 pillars of successfully introducing AI for your organisation.?

?1. Business strategy: define business objectives?

Implementing AI in your everyday business life means, that you must ask yourself: how can AI help me in my job and to reach my targets? The answer is easy: AI can support cost-optimization, content generation and most importantly: analyse your data and calculate possible weaknesses. AI can summarize how far you are from your goals and objectives. First, you need to decide what you need the support of AI for, and how these align with your organization’s goal. Determine, how you will measure these objectives and build a portfolio management plan.??

2. Technology strategy?

Before jumping into the realm of data, AI and machine learning, you have to make sure that you have the right application to do so. Choose an application and data platform architecture that can meet your business’s requirements while remaining secure and at scale. The platform and architecture come first as they can determine whether you build the solution yourself, buy a prebuild solution or enhance a legacy system. Choosing the right technology stack is critical: you need to opt for something secure but something that can be improved and customised.??

In the transportation industry, you can enhance legacy systems using AI and improve them with modern and new technology. Things that were made manually can be done automatically now: accessibility, SEO, or making it more secure and enhancing the system with a better interface can be done in a more cost-efficient. Instead of spending thousands of hours doing anything manually, you can half the working hours! And we all know time is money.??

3. AI Strategy and experience?

The last decade has been about customization, but AI takes it one step further. It can create a feeling of customer-centricity. Performance, user interface and speed are all part of this customer-focused experience, whether your application is for your employees (such as a data management tool for your finance controllers) or your clients and customers. In each case, you must find the perfect tool for the specific problem you would like to solve to avoid additional costs and strengthen cost control.??

Develop a process to gradually introduce AI in your organization. Start small to be able to estimate the length of the project, and explore possible opportunities and blockers. In bespoke development, we call this proof of concept – it is a method to identify possible threats and to make sure everything can be done technically.??

4. Organization and culture?

While implementing AI, your organizational culture, including leadership support, learning and development will be critical for your success. Providing access to skills development, and gaining certifications are must-have assets for your employees. In today’s fast-paced world, not learning and growing personally and professionally is the biggest mistake anyone can make. But as an organization, you are the one who needs to provide the right tools for your employees.??

5. AI governance?

Now that you assessed your business needs and goals, defined your technology and AI strategy, and implemented it in your organization and culture, there is one more thing: consider the processes, controls. Implementing any type of AI can affect data privacy or security policies.??

?AI can propel your organisation towards success, but comprehensive planning and execution are essential for realising its benefits securely. AI is not only a buzzword anymore – we know it’s here and it can help in every business decision we make. The only thing left is to ask yourself: Are you ready to take the next step???

Article written by Szilard Csorge , Managing Director.

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