It seems in the last 12 months, AI has stormed the scene and become part of business conversations across every industry. Now that Chat GPT has been in the public eye for over 24 months, the adoption curve is starting to take shape. 18 months ago, at a university dean’s council meeting, large companies were sharing their strategy to block AI sites from employee access. Those policies have shifted as the power and productivity of harnessing AI is becoming apparent. IHL research shows that retailers who deploy AI solutions get two times the return on investment on those investments over other IT projects. So, the next big question is, where do you start? I would advocate the road to AI starts with two steps:

Step 1: Data Mapping

While this is not a glamourous or highly visible step, it is necessary to understand what data your organization has, where it resides, and what data is missing. For the data “holes,” you can then determine whether to tap into public sources of data to fill the gaps or determine if you need to ingest or convert analog data sources into digital data. This inventory and data mapping should highlight the systems your company has, and what data rights employee roles have to that data. Ideally only a small number of employees should have access to the entire data lake. Lastly, how secure is your data and are the measures to protect and compartmentalize it keeping up with the times?

Step 2: Use Case Modeling

The second step on your AI journey should be to highlight the top two to three use cases you want to enable with this new tool. Will it be to improve worker productivity? Enable an entirely new customer experience? This modeling should get specific enough to know how often the new use case will occur and who the ideal person or customer of the use case will be. That will help you set measurements up front for what a successful pilot/completion of the use case will entail. The modeling should highlight what data from step one is needed to light up the use case, and again solve the challenge on where to get the data if its missing.  

While AI has been around in deep use cases for over 10 years, the new tools and models are putting this powerful tool into the hands of many. If your company needs a guide on this journey, I recommend working with Sciata, a digital transformation company based in Scottsdale, Arizona. They have already completed over 75 AI and data migration projects with Fortune 100 companies.

Want to discuss your AI journey further? I’m happy to meet with you, hear about your company, and where you are going

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