Embarking on a Generative AI(GenAI) Transformation Journey
Bishu Panigrahi
Managing Partner @ IBM Consulting | CRM, Gen AI, Hybrid Cloud, Applications
How to get your enterprise to leverage GenAI to transform the organization and be future ready?
Organizations can't operate in today's world of VUCA and be future ready without embarking on a GenAI powered digital transformation journey. To achieve market leadership and differentiation, they need to drive the AI-first agenda in their core operating model and cultural ethos. Customers are increasingly demanding organizations to provide immense personalized value to them and build sustainable business models that enhance not just shareholder value but also embed sustainability in their core business activities with a conviction to reduce carbon footprint and building a more equitable society.
We have all witnessed how COVID19 forced many companies to push the needle with their companies’ digital transformation pursuits or risked getting disrupted or becoming irrelevant. The rise of GenAI now is super charging this realization as we see GenAI sitting on top of most of the Leadership agenda for CEOs and CxO’s. Competing in the age of AI mandates AI should be the new operational foundation of businesses underpinned by systemic changes that is its culture and its core business values. Increasingly with the onset of GenAI, these digital core or AI-first organizations operating models are essential to help them reinvent their businesses, supercharge growth, gain competitive advantage and ultimately win in the age of disruption. Let’s dive deeper into GenAI.
What is GenAI Is and Why It Is Important Now?
Companies around the world are recognizing the benefits of generative AI. When combined with automation technology, generative AI can help clients improve interactions with customers and partners, as well as boost operational efficiency and productivity. As a result, business leaders are increasingly asked how they use generative AI to transform their organizations.
The growing adoption of generative AI across industries reflects their crucial role in leveraging foundation models and large language models (LLMs) in the enterprise. This, in turn, is driving a new era of work and productivity across industries. GenAI models support many tasks that are either not possible or much more difficult to achieve with traditional AI.
GenAI has profound effects on business, including content discovery and creation, summarization of text, conversational knowledge and regulations, the automation and augmentation of human work, and the customer and employee experience. It is transforming all industries and domains from supply chains and IT & Application Operations to customer service, Marketing and HR/Talent Transformation.
How to start the Generative AI journey?
So what needs to happen to ensure that organizations continually reinvent their organizations and are successful with their GenAI pursuits?
I will share 5 major areas which the C Suites and IT Leaders should focus:
1.???? Identify Northstar and transformative use cases
Leaders and C Suite executives need to establish a clear vision and a north star to emphasize the importance of transformation through GenAI so that the message is clear across the organization. This will mean coming up with a digital ambition described in terms of tangible business outcomes from improving the enterprise’s current business model (optimization through improving productivity and customer experience) and going beyond it (transformation by generating new sources of revenue streams).
Organizations and its C-Suite need to start looking into use cases prioritization with anticipate ROI that can demonstrate business potential and deliver business outcome. General tendency is for organizations to run technical pilots that simply demonstrate the feasibility of the concept with generative AI, leading to only incremental improvements and ignoring the transformative potential of technology. Key is to focus on capitalizing the huge potential of GenAI by quickly moving from experimentation phase with POC’s and Pilots to scale across enterprise.
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2.???? Pilot the transformative use cases.
Conduct ideation workshops powered by Garage methodology and design thinking in collaboration with the business to brainstorm potential use cases harnessing the disruptive potential of generative AI and its alignment with strategic objectives. Involve business partners from the very start of this journey.
Evaluate and prioritize these use cases based on their business value and feasibility, focusing on a select few for the initial generative AI pilot.
Develop a minimum viable product for each prioritized use case, validating with identified target business key performance indicators (KPIs). Clearly articulate improvement hypotheses, deployment strategies, and risk mitigation plans to expedite hypothesis testing.
Deliver the essential functionality needed to test the selected use cases, refining assumptions regarding scaling costs and value. Assess whether to halt, refine, or scale each use case based on initial outcomes. Leverage successful outcomes to expand and build upon the generative AI pilot.
Setup the Center of Compentency (CoE) which comprises of product owner, Architect, Experience Designer, Data Scientist , AI experts, developers etc to be able do the pilots and then similar squads to scale the pilots.
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3.???? Combine the power of GenAI with Human Centricity
There needs to be a collaborative approach where AI and human centricity complement each other where combining the strengths of AI algorithms with human intuition and creativity would lead to superior business outcomes. Enterprise Design Thinking at scale plays a major role in building empathy for not just customers but empowers employees to harness the capabilities of individuals across the enterprise to continually spark innovation and build products that focus on user outcomes.
Unlike traditional hierarchical structures where decision-making is concentrated at the top, future ready or AI-first organizations foster decentralized decision-making augmented by AI powered business intelligence. Decision authority may be distributed across the organization, allowing for greater agility and responsiveness.
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Organizations need to foster an inclusive culture one that is underpinned by enhancing customer and employee experience as without experience companies would not be able to become customer obsessed.
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4.???? Embed a culture of Responsible AI inside the organization
According to @Dario Gill, Senior Vice President and Director of IBM research, organizations to be successful, need to build elements of Enterprise AI which include:
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- Privacy & Data protection
There is no AI without data, so protecting your data is key, and will be your competitive advantage. Many generative AI implementations will depend on access to third-party foundation models and applications. The use of private, proprietary, sensitive or confidential information as inputs into these generative AI models entails risks of data leakage and potential violations of existing regulations. Organizations must monitor and enforce privacy, confidentiality and governance of their data in the environments where models are hosted.
- Embrace principles of transparency and trust
- Implement ethically making AI explainable, robust, fair and free of bias
- Selection of multi-models
- Robust integration strategy
- Deployment architecture
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5.???? Iterate and evolve the transformational journey
Leveraging GenAI is going to be an ongoing process - a journey that organizations need to take, keeping a long-term view in mind. C Suite executives need to encourage a growth mindset of continuous improvement and iteration. There needs to be a learning culture where people could stay abreast of new technologies and industry trends to ensure the organization remains agile and adaptable. IBM AI Academy is designed to help business leaders gain the knowledge needed to prioritize the AI investments that can drive growth.
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What is the road ahead?
There is a race among organizations and countries vying for leadership in AI which is why a global regulatory policy should shape AI priorities, innovation focus, and regulations. They will influence risk factors, address biases, and determine the level of public oversight towards responsible use of AI. ?Striking a balance between accelerating AI innovation and incorporating trustworthy AI that safeguards and address biases is crucial. Business and policy leaders must keenly observe, as the landscape of GenAI will shape the future and impact societies globally.
Regulation minimizes uncertainty and risk, offering comfort for AI investments. Waiting for regulations compromises short and medium-term advantages. Proceeding cautiously is essential, as doing nothing poses a greater risk.
‘We must balance the desire for rapid innovation, with the need for ensuring that AI is used responsibly and ethically…..”AI governance and ethics” must be more than a buzz phrase. To truly leverage AI’s potential as a force for good and create equitable experiences for all, we must act.’ - @Mathew Candy, Global Managing partner, Generative AI, IBM Consulting
IBM was one of the first signatories to the Rome Call for AI ethics which underlined the following principles; 1) Transparency – AI systems must be understandable to all
2) Inclusion – These systems must not discriminate against anyone because every human being has equal dignity
3) Responsibility – There must always be someone who takes responsibility for what a machine does
4) Impartiality – AI systems must not follow or create biases
5) Reliability – AI must be reliable
6) Security and Privacy – These systems must be secure and respect the privacy of users
Would like to sign off by saying " GenAI is driving new risks and complexities, Organizations basing decisions on unfair or biased results can face audits, fines, costly litigation and reputational damage. Strategically implementing AI governance is key in monitoring and managing new risks associated with Generative AI (Gen AI)".
Programme Director @ North Oil Company Qatar | IT Services, Business Data Management
5 个月Interesting article. We are at the start of a transformational journey with Gen AI and it will require a change mindset.The early adopters with a positive mindset will forge ahead. Organisations need to have it as part of their business strategy. Thanks for Sharing Bishu
Great read Bishu, thanks for sharing.
CEO at Cognitive.Ai | Building Next-Generation AI Services | Available for Podcast Interviews | Partnering with Top-Tier Brands to Shape the Future
5 个月Exciting times ahead for companies embracing an AI-first approach! Bishu Panigrahi
Associate Director | Market Research | Healthcare IT Consultant | Healthcare IT Transformation | Head of Information Technolgy | IoT | AI | BI
5 个月Excited to dive into this topic! ??
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5 个月Exciting times ahead for companies embracing an AI-first approach!