AI and GenAI-led Digital Transformation: Need of the Hour and Absolutely Feasible Now
Alok Ranjan
Co-founder at WalkingTree and Qritrim | Generative AI, AI/ML and Product Engineering
Digital Transformation (DX) doesn't need any introduction, however, as the push for AI-driven-decision has increased across the board, it is becoming a more crucial driver of success and sustainability of the businesses. Many businesses, have been waiting on sidelines and delaying their decision to transform themselves. Some of the businesses are under immense pressure to innovate, optimize, and stay competitive.
The possibility and hype around AI and GenAI has got many of the businesses interested in the topic itself and they see a hope that they can indeed innovate, optimize and compete. However, as they think about the next steps, they have started realizing that before leveraging AI or GenAI, they also need to review their digital ecosystem and ensure that it is ready for AI-led transformation.
AI and GenAI stand out as transformative forces reshaping industries across the globe. Businesses must leverage this to eliminate inefficiencies and build a culture of data-driven decision making.
The AI-led Digital Transformation promises a radical reimagining of how your business operates. By weaving digital, data and AI technologies into every facet of your organization, you unlock the potential to:
A 2022 McKinsey report indicates that companies successful in digital transformation see a 10% increase in market share and 20% reduction in costs through improved customer reachout & onboarding, automation, optimization, and data-driven decision-making leading to significant cost savings.
In this article, I aim to help you understand why AI-led DX is the need of the hour and why it more feasible now than earlier.
Why AI-Led DX is Feasible and Needed Now?
Modern enterprises generate vast amounts of data from various sources, including customer interactions, operational processes, sensors, and market trends. AI thrives on large datasets for training and improving models. To transform this data into actionable insights, to build predictive models, and to ensure automated decisions to enhance business operations and customer experiences, AI is becoming a natural choice.
Changing Data Landscape
While a few years ago, the major challenges were associated with storage and access of data, the acceptance and decreased cost of cloud infrastructure has solved the compute and storage challenges in big way and it continues to get better. Advancements in computational power, cloud computing, and specialized hardware (e.g., GPUs, TPUs) make deploying complex AI models more practical and affordable. This allows businesses of all sizes to leverage AI capabilities without the need for massive in-house infrastructure investments.
With access to compute and storage, businesses are keen to process large datasets quickly and deliver real-time analytics, enabling faster decision-making and responsiveness. The challenge is not the availability of solutions but more of creating the needed business value.
Utilizing advanced analytics to extract actionable insights, identifying patterns, making predictions and integrating them with existing processes through simple API-based inferences makes data extremely usable. Furthermore, the possibility of creating a bespoke data ecosystems - either using cloud native tools or best-of-the-breed open source options makes it feasible to implement AI solutions that can drive strategic decisions, optimize operations and provide a huge competitive advantage that will be difficult for the competitors to emulate.
Customer-focused Value Proposition
Traditionally, the value proposition was more of firm specific. The companies were often deciding the value addition based on their limited R&D by a very limited group of people. However, the approach has changed significantly and customers have started playing a significant role in these decisions. Given that AI can analyze customer data to understand preferences, behavior, and trends, facilitating personalized interactions and experiences, it further puts the customer in the centre.
The multimodal AI capabilities further pushes the boundaries to combine several parameters together and create new experiences. Naturally, customers now expect tailored experiences and proactive services, which AI can provide by leveraging predictive analytics and hyper personalization. Thus value creation has become two-way process and proactively identifying and creating such values are important for staying competitive.
AI enables new business models and operational efficiencies that can outpace competitors still relying on traditional methods. Hence, to stay ahead in a market where digital-native companies set new standards for speed, personalization, and innovation, use of AI-driven transformation is no longer a choice but it has become mandate.
Agile Innovation
In addition to prediction and recommendations, AI can automate repetitive tasks, reduce errors, and free up human resources for more strategic roles. The use of GenAI like capabilities takes the game to even a step ahead where it understands the human intention, comes up with a plan, reviews that plan with the human and starts executing the plan using approved/suitable tools.
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In the AI-enabled world, the winners will take the biggest pie and hence Innovation is no longer a choice. Given that prototyping, testing and validating new ideas have become cheaper, faster and easier - there is always a push for iterating faster and creating the next value that will improve the customer's experience.
Interestingly, on one side you have so much internal data and on the other side you have possibility of augmenting your data through synthetic data generation and procuring highly curated data from third party. All these things provide an amazing capabilities to think about newer business model and experiences - leading to agile innovation.
Co-pilot, Agents Ecosystems and GenAI
Models like GPT-4 and other powerful LLMs have greater understanding of human language, enabling chatbots, sentiment analysis, and language translation. They can generate human-like text, code, and even images on oneside and extract meaningful information from unstructured data on the otherside. Overall these pre-trained models and APIs make it easier for businesses to integrate AI without building everything from scratch.
While this was itself very powerful, the possibility of utilizing agents ecosystems to build co-pilot for specific roles within the organization brings in a very tempting value proposition.
The GenAI-powered agents can orchestrate complex workflows, coordinate activities, apply logic, and evaluate answers. More importantly, they augment human workers by enhancing their capabilities, leading to better service quality. These agents are evolving into a very promising virtual workers/assistants that both augment and automate enterprise services - transforming work across user journeys, processes, and functions.
ChatGPT has already made the GenAI in particular and AI in general a very well accepted and desired technology. As adoption grows, enterprises will unlock value through productivity gains and improved customer experiences.
Compliance and Risk Management
Finally, in addition to achieving productivity, efficiency and innovation, AI is proving to be an amazing support in auditing compliances and identifying operational risks. It can continuously monitor transactions and operations for compliance and risk management, adapting to regulatory changes swiftly.
AI can play the role of a vigilant guardian, not only ensuring compliance but also preemptively safeguarding against potential risks, enabling businesses to operate with confidence and agility.
Summary
AI-led digital transformation is not just a futuristic concept but a present-day imperative. With the feasibility brought by advanced data analytics, computational power, and the need to meet modern customer expectations, businesses can no longer afford to delay their AI journey. Embracing AI now ensures sustained growth, enhanced competitiveness, and the ability to navigate the complexities of the digital age with confidence.
At WalkingTree we help our customers improve their customers experience through bespoke experience design by factoring the the effective use of data analytics, AI/GenAI and persona specific insights. We will be excited to see you being on the right side of the technology and business outcome!
References
AI & ML Innovator | Transforming Data into Revenue | Expert in Building Scalable ML Solutions | Ex-Microsoft
4 个月I completely agree that AI-led digital transformation is essential for businesses today. The advancements in data analytics and computational power have made AI more accessible and practical than ever before. Embracing AI now can indeed drive growth, enhance competitiveness, and help businesses adapt to the complexities of the digital age.Historically, those who adopt new technologies early often gain significant advantages. Think of how businesses that adopted the internet early on gained a competitive edge. AI offers similar transformative potential. One thought to consider: How can businesses ensure they implement AI in ways that are ethical and beneficial for all stakeholders? Thanks for sharing your insights!