How Technology Made Me a CEO, and How AI Can for You

This Article Discusses

·?????How I used technology to move our business first into a tech enabled services company and then into a full-blown technology company which landed me a CEO job

·??????Why it will be easier for you than it was for me, to springboard your career using technology because you have AI.

·?????How to get started:

·?????Part A, a step-by-step guide to getting started, even for someone who has never used Chat-GPT.?

·?????Part B, practical steps you can take to begin introducing AI based value to your organization.

Background

I had just been given the keys to a troubled business unit that we had acquired 3 ? year’s prior. It was a massive promotion for me as I had moved directly from an entry level position in a cubical to the president’s job in the corner office of my own business unit in a city four hundred miles from corporate.?I would be the fourth president in less than 4 years. The pressure was on because my company was not shy when it came to making changes.?

How I Used Technology to Move Our Business Forward

My new business unit had a unique product, nobody else was doing what we did, and even now, 21 years later, they have nearly the entire market. The problem was that customers had a tough time getting value from the product, and the selling cycle was long because prospects knew that once they purchased our unique leads, based on government filings, they needed to spend money on marketing to monetize that investment. In addition to that, there were many problems with the product delivery and the format of the product. We processed and had new data available daily, but our customers only received monthly updates on paper lead-cards. When they received new lead-cards they had to manually file them. They had to maintain their own lead-card “library”. We estimated that less than 5% of our customer base managed this properly. Transitioning the business to SaaS was an ideal move, but in late 2001, when I took over, online products were the “Exception” rather than “The rule” as is the case today. We had to make up the rules as we played the game. It took us about 18 months to wrap our arms around the opportunity and begin to scope out an online product. In early 2003 we started working on a SaaS product. The acronym SaaS wasn’t even coined until 2005. It may sound like it, but I don’t think we were pioneers, Salesforce was founded in early 1999. We were just a small team trying to make some things happen. In addition to our paper lead cards and prior to my arrival we had developed a desktop software application that less than thirty of our seven hundred customers used and we had twenty customers who received a database from us monthly in a flat file. Not only was the online product a much better means of delivery, but the product itself was worlds better than everything else we had or could deliver via any other method. For us it was the equivalent of Netflix pivoting from mailing DVD’s to streaming.?

?The pre-online and post online problems that we solved will not be the same problem-set that you need to tackle, but the principles are the same. You’ve got a product and a lot of your customers are only scratching the surface with what they could be doing with it thus leaving value on the table.?

Neither we nor our parent company had the expertise to build an online product, so we outsourced it. When our vendor delivered it to us in October of 2005 it didn’t function as intended. We finally went to market in April of 2006 with a product that worked but didn’t have the exciting bells and whistles that we dreamed of. We were hugely disappointed. That said, the April launch drove 31% YOY topline growth and transformed the business. We were a SaaS company. But since we didn’t build it, we were classified as a technology enabled services company. There is a difference. A technology company builds new technology i.e., software development and a tech enabled services company uses technology to, innovate, deliver, and fulfill a service.?

Moving to a technology company was easier and harder than I thought. We hired an experienced CTO, someone skilled in leading development projects. He had the experience and connections that we needed to make that transition and in that sense it was easy. Culturally it was difficult, my parent company didn’t have experience in building, maintaining, and supporting enterprise level online applications and this was a real roadblock.?

Why It Will Be Easier for You

You don’t need to become a technology company or even a tech enabled services company to make game changing impacts with AI and that’s because of the natural language innovation. Like most of the people reading this, I’ve never written a line of code. An excel formula is my limit. Because of natural language processing you can begin using AI to improve your business immediately. You can even ask AI how AI can improve your business. This, of course, levels the playing field but most people don’t lead with initiative, businesses are dying for people to take the lead on innovation. If you start actively developing business improvements with AI at your place of business, you will be ahead of 95% of the people in your organization. I was involved in lots of areas around the building, launching, selling, marketing, and supporting of our new product. But actually making a single-handed impact is something that was not available to mere mortals (non-coders) like me. I know Silicon Valley has renaissance men and women who can do it all, but I didn’t know anyone who had all the business skills and was also a skilled coder. Natural language processing AI is a sea change. I received my first PC at work in 1988 and by 1995 when I bought my first PC (Mac’s had just a 15% market share back then) for business use at home, one of my first priorities was to make sure my 3-year-old was well versed in technology. Those were the days of dial up and a CD ROM provided a much better experience than the internet. Everyone knew that the home computer was going to be the next big thing. People were quicker to catch on to that than they were to “Get” that the internet followed the personal computer as the next big thing. So, everyone knows now that AI is going to be the next big thing and they and you are right.

How to Get Started

There are an enormous number of companies specializing in AI regarding healthcare, the financial sector, education, and the list goes on. There will be AI applications that specialize, and we already have access to the broad AI application’s Chat-GTP and Bard, with many more on the horizon. You can take the lead and become an expert in what specific applications are available and how they can help your business. Much like a CRM is an application that improves almost every business, there will be AI applications that will become as commonplace as CRM and Payroll software, but nobody knows what these are yet. If I were trying to make an impact on a business, I would do the following:

Part A – Starting from Scratch

• Every day I would tee-up Chat-GPT and Bard and use them in place of google every time. I would ask the same question to both every time.
• I would check out DALL-E, Chat-GPT’s AI graphic’s generator.
• I would take an online class on how to get the most out of Chat-GPT. I’ve signed up for one. You can also search online videos and social media posts.
• Start consistently researching the AI industry and applications that are available. Follow AI on LinkedIn.

Part B – Making an Impact

• Identify any existing product issues and list how they can be fixed with the help of AI. For example, at my old company, we modeled economic impacts but didn’t put them into a report format. This capability would have been extremely helpful to customers and is something they would pay for. AI does an excellent job with this.
• What are the problems that are keeping your customers from realizing the maximum benefits from your products? What do they need to help them get over the hurdle and onto greater product utilization? Start a list.
• How can AI help with the problems you have identified above?
• Is it a matter of you writing a simple AI query and paring that with some of your product output to achieve a needed solution?
• Is there an AI product on the market that your company needs to integrate with your offering?
• Should you consider having a custom AI solution developed?
• Remember this: As you begin to incorporate innovations based on AI, you will receive pushback from somewhere in your organization. Don’t let that deter you.
• Find a colleague to partner with you, this will add energy and build momentum for the initiative you started.

In the old days nobody did their own development work. All companies outsourced the development and maintenance of their website, not to mention the development of an enterprise level application. One day everybody woke up and realized that these capabilities were so important that they needed to bring these skills in-house. I’m sure you are following me, as I suggest that AI will take a similar path, but that realization will be much faster. Your company probably doesn’t have a Director of AI yet. But I predict that every company that has developers will soon have an AI department. There will be millions of positions in this field and just like I didn’t invent SaaS, we quickly followed and built a dynamic business that is still flourishing today. That move made my career. You can be your company's first Director or VP or even Chief AI Officer. I see 3 prerequisites for this position:

• ???????A great understanding of your customers' needs and your offerings gaps.
• ???????The ability to connect dots between what’s needed and how AI can solve those needs.
• ???????Enthusiasm for AI’s potential.

The graphic that I used on the headline page of this article was an automated suggestion from PowerPoint, I’m guessing you’ve used PowerPoint’s “design” feature. I just plugged in the article title, and this was one of their suggestions. Since Microsoft has a significant investment in Chat-GTP and has their own AI application, I’m excited to see how this technology will enhance PowerPoint’s design capabilities.???

Bill Ault is a former SaaS CEO and the founder of CareerPathing.co a career and leadership coaching practice. He writes about leadership and Culture on the American career path.