GenAI is Great…But Don’t Forget about the Other Tools in Your Tech Toolbox

One of the loudest drumbeats in the tech world today is GenAI, and for good reason. It is set to transform our lives and work. But let’s not get so laser focused on GenAI that we overlook the other tools in our toolbox that we can be using to enhance our businesses today. Below are three actions to consider and, spoiler alert, pursuing any of these three will also set you up to better use GenAI too.

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1. Automation

In some ways, the focus on GenAI has caused us to rush past more traditional AI tools. But GenAI isn’t the solution for everything and most of us never had the time to fully capitalize on more traditional AI before GenAI crashed the party. Case in point, most businesses have not automated everything that they could yet.?

Ask yourself, what are the most common tasks that are done in my company? Those tasks should be ripe for automation using traditional approaches like RPA, integration, or orchestration. When you focus on the workflows to optimize, you can consider all of the tools in your toolbox, not just GenAI.

For many routine tasks, automation can happen without the complexities and challenges of using GenAI. With automation, you can eliminate mundane work for your employees while cutting costs. Using traditional tools to automate will also help you to prioritize where GenAI is most useful and needed in your business.

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2. Improving data quality

Another thing we sped past in our rush to adopt GenAI is improving data quality. Many companies are still engaged in digital transformation and for most, data quality is not where we want it to be. From cleansing to quality to observability, there are a lot of things we can be doing today to enhance the data that we have and use.

Quality data can help you better track and monitor your business, make informed decisions, and optimize processes to improve performance. Since you are going to use the data to train AI at some point anyway, why not start looking at its integrity now?

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3. Enhancing experience

Few companies ever take the time to find out what really frustrates users, especially when it comes to their own employees. Many software and product companies have Customer Advisory Councils that can ask consumers questions and collate feedback. And most companies survey their employees for satisfaction, but they don’t focus on how they could improve employees’ experience with technology in the workplace.

The bottom line is that improving employee experience—especially providing them with the right tools to do their job in an easy, seamless fashion—is crucial for employee satisfaction, retention, and productivity. Ensuring good employee experience will be just as important, if not more so, as you launch new technologies like GenAI. Employees will be far more likely to use GenAI if the experience of using it is easy and integrated with their other work.

Don’t know where to start on employee experience? Ideation and innovation can often come from within! Start by talking with your employees. You could even adopt a system to collect and manage such ideas in one place within your company.

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Focus on Goals, Not Tools

A table saw may be one of the most powerful tools in your workshop, but it is useless if you just need to nail two pieces of wood together. There’s a reason the screwdriver and hammer are in every workshop. They may not be flashy, but for a lot of jobs, they are the right tool to get the job done.

GenAI is an amazing tool, with new capabilities seeming to emerge daily, but we should all remember it is just one tool in our toolbox. We should absolutely leverage GenAI when the problem at hand or our strategic goals mean it is the best tool for the job. But let the jobs to be done, not the tools we have, guide how we approach our businesses. And as the three examples above illustrate, this doesn’t have to be an either or decision. Enhancing our businesses using other actions can actually better set us up to capitalize on GenAI in the future.

#AI #GenAI #artificialintelligence #automation