How to Make AI Less Artificial

No, I am not suggesting that we allow AI to become sentient and take over our lives & planet. Yes, I do mean making it less artificial in terms of understanding where we're headed in the automation age and how to realize the different types of AI with their benefits more quickly.

Time to value was one of the largest business risks for early AI adopters. With many budgets even tighter than they were 15 years ago, back when I was implementing speech analytics, data governance teams & back office bot tools, it's important to realize the benefits quickly once you're paying for the systems and for the staff administering AI.

You can make AI less artificial for your business with the right strategy. Where many companies go wrong is simply looking for the largest headcount cutting opportunities. Whether they shift those roles/positions or FTE to other business needs, or eliminate them is besides the point. It's the organizational leaders that find ways to balance both the efficiencies and effectiveness of the right use cases that win. We've all been subject to the AI chatbot that doesn't give us answers, or the #automated attendant that cannot direct us to the right person to speak to. Until trained & improved, they can become a dissatisfier if not careful.

With AI software being the next dot com bubble, we're already seeing winners and losers. It's about to get even noisier, with some experts predicting this industry to be a trillion dollar industry in upcoming years.

I saw a need to take a more human approach to AI via many of our consulting engagements since 2020. AI strategies have been an area where we've excelled in delivering a well thought out roadmap & also helped execute it. Now, to become an end to end resource, we're also training it, speaking about it and advising software companies in some capacities.

At the core of all of this, is strategy. It's also budget/strategic planning season right now and I recently did a podcast with Elate to discuss strategy as it relates to technology transformation.

Many senior leaders will attempt to find some efficiencies for next year and will charge someone to go find the opportunities. It's likely that this team or individual will move forward hastily and try to patch whatever needs patching or will go for the biggest ROI, without thinking through the customer or employee experience. If you'd like to listen to my thoughts on this, here is that discussion on Spotify

Using AI to augment humans tasks, when done correctly inside of a business, is a competitive advantage. Streamlining, removing redundancy, automating and continually improving via data based decision making is a skill that I would be looking to continually promote across all levels of any organization.

If you don't have this skill yet, or you're just beginning to look at AI, you're in luck. Not only can you use Elate to build your entire strategy and connect the measurement & execution owners in one place, but you can now also leverage our practice of AI strategy advisors & content via Efficiencies.AI, a global company I'm launching. We've been doing the work for years, now we'll scale it via our connections across numerous countries, enterprises & tools to do it right.

Enjoy the beginning of your budget season and remember to never trust your strategy, but always trust the people or partners who are leading it. If you have any questions, needs or comments about efficiencies.ai, feel free to connect with [email protected].