Navigating AI in Business: A Playbook for Executives
Ritu Chakrawarty
Generative AI | AI Strategy Leadership | Digital Products Platforms & Industry Solutions | Hands on Product Strategy
Previous articles
Chapter 5: ?Moving from Strategic Bets to Use Case Prioritization and Roadmap
In the previous chapter, we explored how Emma, working closely with the CFO, crafted a solid funding strategy for LuxeLiving’s AI transformation. Now, with the finances secured, her task shifts to aligning that strategy with the company’s overarching goal: delivering AI-driven luxury experiences for high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs). But Emma knows that placing the right bets requires more than gut instinct—it demands a thoughtful, data-driven approach rooted in LuxeLiving’s core: its customers.
To achieve maximum return on investment (ROI), Emma leans on the foundational work her team has already done and dives deep into insights from the Marketing, Sales, and Customer Experience (CX) teams. By analyzing customer profiles and persona data, Emma identifies which profiles contribute most to LuxeLiving’s revenue. This clarity helps her prioritize AI initiatives, ensuring every use case is sharply focused on delivering business impact and enhancing customer satisfaction.
Systematic thinking drives smarter decisions. That’s why Emma crafted a five-step framework to turn strategic bets into a clear, actionable roadmap with prioritized use cases.
Step 1: Apply the Groundwork and Available Data-Driven Insights
Emma’s journey started with assessing LuxeLiving’s current state—diving into customer data, sales trends, and CX metrics. Her earlier work to strengthen the company’s data foundation provided a clear picture of where LuxeLiving stood in its AI journey. Now, working hand in hand with the Marketing team, Emma drilled into customer personas, zeroing in on those driving the most revenue.
The Power of Personas
LuxeLiving’s five key personas—The Customizer, The Smart Living Enthusiast, The Glam Designer, The Minimalist Modernist, and The Legacy Builder—became central to Emma’s strategy. Each persona represented unique emotional and functional needs.More importantly, each had distinct behaviors that AI could address, elevating their experiences while driving revenue.
Emma zeroed in on the personas that mattered most to LuxeLiving’s bottom line: The Customizer and The Smart Living Enthusiast. These customers not only spent more per transaction but also built long-term relationships with the brand. Their shared desire for personalization, exclusivity, and tech-driven solutions made them prime candidates for AI-powered innovation.
With these insights in hand, Emma was ready to move forward. The question now was: Where should LuxeLiving place its AI chips?
Watchout: Data-driven insights are invaluable, but Emma had to ensure her team didn’t fall into analysis paralysis. The focus had to remain on clear, actionable insights that would drive the biggest impact.
Step 2: Leverage Personas to Prioritize Functional Use Cases by Business Value
Emma knew that the secret to success was aligning AI use cases with customer personas. For The Customizer, the focus had to be on personalization—bespoke products tailored to individual tastes. These customers are emotionally driven by the desire to express their unique style, and AI could enhance their experience by offering real-time customization options that reflect their preferences.
For The Smart Living Enthusiast, seamless tech integration was essential. These affluent, tech-savvy individuals value innovation, sustainability, and intelligent products that seamlessly integrate with their smart homes. Emma recognized that AI-powered solutions could enhance their experience by offering smart home integration and energy-efficient products that align with their cutting-edge lifestyles.
Emma also saw potential with The Glam Designer, , who sought trendy and exclusive designs, where AI could offer personalized recommendations and virtual consultations to satisfy their desire for luxury and innovation.
Example Key Use Cases mapping with Persona:
Persona: The Customizer
Business Function: Product & Design
Capabilities Required: AI for real-time personalization, 3D product models, bespoke design
Impact: +20-25% increase in average order value
Persona: The Smart Living Enthusiast
Business Function: Product Development & Sales
Capabilities Required: AI-powered smart home integration, IoT, cloud infrastructure
Impact: +15-20% increase in customer satisfaction and sales conversion
Persona: The Glam Designer
Business Function: Sales & Customer Service
Capabilities Required: AI-driven virtual consultations, personalized recommendations, NLP
Impact: +10-12% increase in customer satisfaction and loyalty
Emma wasn’t solely focused on customer value—she also sought to optimize LuxeLiving’s internal processes. By adding Predictive Inventory Management and AI-powered Predictive Maintenance, she ensured that the company’s supply chain and post-purchase services were equally AI-driven.
Watchout: It’s easy to get carried away with flashy AI innovations. Emma needed to make sure every initiative served both the customer-facing experience and LuxeLiving’s internal operations.
Step 3: Identify Supportive Non-Functional Use Cases
Emma knew that functional use cases alone wouldn’t be enough. To build a truly AI-powered organization, she also had to account for non-functional use cases. LuxeLiving needed the infrastructure, data quality, and governance to support these innovations.
While functional use cases, like AI-powered Customization and Smart Living Integration, directly impacted customer experience, non-functional use cases worked behind the scenes to enable these innovations. Emma recognized that without addressing non-functional elements—such as data accuracy, system integration, and security—LuxeLiving would struggle to implement and scale the AI initiatives.
The Role of Non-Functional Use Cases
Non-functional use cases act as the backbone of the AI transformation, ensuring that the infrastructure and internal systems are robust enough to support customer-facing innovations. These use cases might not be as glamorous as the functional ones, but they are critical for:
Emma’s Approach:
Emma knew she couldn’t tackle everything at once. Therefore, she adopted a systematic approach to identify and prioritize non-functional use cases alongside functional ones. She began by categorizing use cases based on their potential impact on AI implementation. While functional use cases were directly tied to revenue growth or customer experience, non-functional use cases were evaluated on their ability to remove roadblocks and support scalability of functional initiatives.?
To get the balance right, Emma identified critical gaps in the current state of LuxeLiving’s systems and infrastructure. Her systematic approach allowed her to pinpoint which non-functional use cases were necessary to support the successful delivery of functional use cases.
Here are the key non-functional use cases she prioritized:
Aligning Non-Functional and Functional Use Cases
Emma understood that while functional use cases brought immediate, visible results, non-functional use cases were just as critical for long-term success. She ensured that the two types of use cases worked hand in hand. For example:
By systematically prioritizing both functional and non-functional use cases, Emma ensured that LuxeLiving wasn’t just rolling out AI initiatives but building a scalable, sustainable foundation that would support future growth.
Watchout: Neglecting non-functional use cases could create bottlenecks. Emma had to ensure critical backend capabilities, such as data governance and infrastructure, developed in tandem with customer-facing solutions.
Emma built a table mapping use cases to specific business functions, like Marketing, while estimating the impact of each initiative. This gave her a clear picture of the data, infrastructure, AI, and human capital needed to bring each functional use case to life.
Watchout: Prioritizing too many high-complexity use cases can stretch resources too thin. Emma needed to be strategic, focusing on early wins while gradually introducing more complex initiatives.
Step 4: Generate a High-Level Roadmap
Emma broke her roadmap into three phases, each building on the last to ensure AI implementation was scalable and aligned with LuxeLiving’s long-term goals.
Watchout: Scaling too quickly could overwhelm operations. Emma had to be mindful of when and how to introduce automation, ensuring the team was prepared.
Step 5: Navigating the Roadmap for Maximum Impact
To communicate her strategy effectively, Emma created a visual roadmap showing how each use case aligned with business value and implementation complexity. This helped LuxeLiving’s leadership see how AI would drive both customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Watchout: Visual roadmaps need to remain grounded in practicality. Emma ensured that each visual was tied to tangible next steps, rather than abstract ideas.
Conclusion
By systematically assessing LuxeLiving’s current state and leveraging detailed persona data, Emma was able to craft a clear, phased roadmap for AI success. Each use case was carefully selected to drive growth and operational efficiency while staying deeply aligned with customer needs
Next Chapter: From Plan to Execution
In the next chapter, we’ll close the series by shifting focus to execution—bringing the roadmap to life. We’ll explore the crucial steps needed to move from strategy to action, highlighting the key elements required to execute seamlessly. From setting guardrails to ensuring the right resources are in place, we’ll break down what’s needed to make this AI transformation not just a vision, but a success. We’ll also take a hard look at any additional factors that could be critical in driving this transformation to the finish line.
Previous articles
If you haven’t read the previous articles yet, now’s the time to dig in. We’ve been laying out exactly how AI can reshape LuxeLiving’s strategy, one step at a time. Each one connects to the last, giving you a clear blueprint for leveraging AI to drive real growth. Go back, read through—these insights might be the edge you’ve been looking for