Transitioning to AI-first product offerings

"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." - John F. Kennedy

No bonus points for guessing the crux of this article, it surrounds the poster boy of tech Artificial Intelligence (AI). With tech spearheading in this singular direction, it is no surprise that everyone is rushing towards launching? and/ or including AI in their latest offerings.?

It is no secret that ultimately all offerings will be rebuilt with an AI first approach. Enterprises irrespective of size can't just use the wait-and-watch approach only to lose all the momentum.

Lack of a good AI strategy can affect your

• Thought leadership - You really do not want to be seen as someone in tune with what even primary school kids are talking about. Never in the history of the mankind we had seen a technology that disrupted so much so rapidly.
• Investability - “If everyone is doing it, it must be the next big thing” , phenomina continues to drive the investors too. Do you really think you will even stand a chance with VC's who are looking at 5-7 year horizon without having AI on your deck?
• Talent value -? Talent wants to work which will make them future safe. Without talking about AI you are shutting away all good and committed talent who will never be motivated to work in your organization.
• Competitiveness - As said before “If you’re not talking about and doing what everyone else is, you’re more likely to be forgotten that unique”. But AI has a huge role to prepare enterprises/startups for being competitive. AI ensures shorter product life cycles, shorter feature rollouts, effecient backend operations, reduced content/ configuration teams and lot more.

But what's worse? It’s that elusive risk of losing relevance with the customers, bringing down the wonderful journey you had embarked upon. Hence, I feel it’s now essential that Entrepreneurs & businesses launch unique and relevant AI first offerings.?

Weather you are a SAAS company trying to reimagine your offerings, an enterprise software company hunting for better ROI, an online/offline retailers wanting to create better experience or a?D2C brand building great customer delight, it’s time to leverage the power of AI!

Here is a simple framework, there exist are only 3 questions you need to answer?

A. What are the opportunities AI presents in terms of my offerings?

B. What are the costs & risks of embracing the same?

C. Can the risks be mitigated & investment can be found?

How can you embrace an AI first solution?

It is no surprise that identifying an AI first solution is both an art and a science, but with billions of dollars poured into AI, there are new discoveries and possibilities every day. AI enabled offerings can deliver several benefits including but not limited to better features, fresher solutions, an improved experience, reduced response time, faster implementation, smarter decision making & many more.?

One way to launch a fantastic AI first solution is to look at the bigger picture of your solution rather than the micro fixes. For example, in the domain of cybersecurity, vulnerabilities are all around. While it may be a simple solution to identify vulnerabilities using AI, what if we used AI to map these vulnerabilities towards solutions? Abhaya, one of the promising cybersecurity startups I’ve seen has been able to make cybersecurity inexpensive by using AI to identify fixes for vulnerabilities in seconds.

Another perspective to launching an AI solution is to pick up the tools aspect. Launching AI tools to assist an already existing solution also has a fantastic market. For example, Web3Audit is an AI tool that helps find potential issues with code reducing time and cost of audit, or Project R, a tool to replace devops resources making devops outsourcing business scalable. One that particularly interest me is OneSKU, a tool that is helping businesses speedup their onboarding while creating new possibilities

Each of these examples has only made me realize the scope that startups have in terms of launching AI first solutions.

The impact is so much that I came across an AI company, Greenifly. They focus on precision agriculture using drones, reducing chemical exposure and improving yield throughout the crop lifecycle.??

Potential costs & risks

Few Corporations especially those who are in SAAS or the software product business may face the challenges of AI competing with existing revenue channels, or affecting growth metrics being tracked. But the reality is that markets, customers, investors & the competitive landscape demand enterprises to embrace AI quickly.

Revenues and ARPU getting affected may impact even the metrics that the business are tracking. Metrics as one understands might be crucial to keep the commitments to the board & also to address investment expectations from the business

AI can potentially pose huge risks, including stability & accuracy of AI, hallucinations, ethical concerns, data protection, and potential disruptions to existing workflows. Furthermore, AI systems may require vast amounts of data, sophisticated algorithms, and continuous updates. If not managed properly, these requirements can become quite overwhelming.

But the biggest concern of all is that of the cost and time required to see the results that haunt the holy grail of ROI. Here are a few factors of time when AI becomes expensive

1. Need for creating data lakes
2. Having an expensive teams of data scientists, Data engineers, business analysts & many other team members
3. Tools & licenses that cost a bomb

One thing to note is that with distributed data & multiple experiments, the time required to see results itself will be delayed.

Can It Be De-Risked?

Despite the various risks, there are strategies to mitigate them and ensure smooth AI integration. Proper planning, continuous monitoring, and stakeholder engagement are key to derisking AI implementation. Here are a few ways to de risk launching an?

AI first solution

1. Leverage platforms with a time bound planning and expectation of results
2. Identify a stakeholder within the organization who works with the vendor to achieve the required results
3. Have eyes & ears open to leverage smaller wins in terms of tech result for large scale adoption
4. Form separate teams with ownership & rewards to win the AI battle
5. Talent is scarce and new options like incubation/ acquisition needs to be explored

How CoCreate is helping?

The promise of CoCreate is that of CoCreation and we’re working with enterprises & startups to evolve AI first offerings for their customers. CoCreate brings its own skin in the journey of your innovation as a fund & foundry, apart from identifying opportunities with you, we bring together the right teams and investment. Corporates have the opportunity to invest/coinvest/ acquire & take rights to market the innovation. CoCreate does it with its access to large pool of brightest minds across Indian campuses with experience in building innovation as a team.

Our data points and belief in the fact that our youngsters on campus have distinct advantage of fresh thinking when it comes to latest technologies like AI. Ability of students to masters latest trends in AI & apply deep maths/ interdisciplinary innovation is parallel to none. It is this talent & capability that awaits our corporates and funded startups to embrace ?

By partnering with funds & foundries like CoCreate Ventures, businesses can successfully integrate AI into their offerings and stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market.