AI Guidelines for Businesses: Using AI in Your Own Company
- A Critical Step: Involve the Users
If the AI solution in the PoC for the selected use case looks viable and convincing from a technical point of view, the experts from the relevant department need to become involved. Therefore, in keeping with the principle of continuous change management, employees should become involved as early as this phase. They know their processes best and are in the best position to judge where the solution still needs to be improved, and they can also provide valuable input—especially when it comes to training the AI solution. Only through continuous use and active feedback can AI learn new things, be trained, deliver more accurate results, and consequently support the day-to-day work. Quite often, very minor optimization measures—such as fine-tuning the relevance model—yield enormous added value. Feedback from key users is essential for a successful subsequent roll-out as well as for acceptance, because they act as multipliers in the company.
In this context, the different deployment options can be considered and adapted to the relevant business needs. AI solutions are usually available in different variations. To find the right option, companies should find out WHERE—in which data sources—they store the majority of their information.
♦ Appliance: The appliance version involves high-performance hardware with perfectly tailored software. This is integrated directly, without any connection to external systems (Internet, manufacturer, provider) into the company’s internal data center and indexes the data from the connected data sources. This option is favored by companies that do not have any data stored outside the company or that want to use the AI solution to process data that is particularly sensitive.
♦ SaaS: For companies that manage a great deal of data in cloud solutions (SharePoint Online, Office 365, Salesforce), a SaaS solution is the ideal option. The AI solution in this case is located in an external data center.
♦ Hybrid: With a hybrid solution, the data stored in the cloud is merged with the data from the company’s own data sources. The AI solution can be operated either in the cloud or on-prem.
- Validate the ROI Calculation
If the test results are satisfactory, the transition to real operation can begin. All settings can be transferred directly from the PoC, and the ROI calculation that was created at the start can be validated. Once the project has been successfully launched, the AI system can be rolled out across other departments or business areas until it is ultimately deployed throughout the entire company, thus transforming all processes (business process transformation).
When used correctly, AI can dramatically improve a company’s performance by automating recurring business processes, increasing understanding of the customer, improving efficiency, and boosting employee satisfaction.
A checklist/cheat sheet for implementing AI-based processes:
♦ What is the specific problem—what is the use case?
♦ What is the objective—what do we want to achieve with it?
♦ Where is the data located—in which data sources?
♦ What do the users say—what needs to be improved?
♦ Have we achieved our targets—what is the return on investment?
Nowadays there are opportunities for optimization along the entire value chain. In some specific application areas, AI is already more powerful and efficient than humans. This is especially true for routine tasks such as distributing or classifying documents, analyzing large amounts of data, or recognizing patterns. Routine tasks include things like visual recognition, speech recognition, natural language processing, and translation. But even tasks that require a certain degree of logical understanding and learning, as well as tasks that are carried out by experts, can be supported in the future through the use of AI. The final authority for decisions, however, is still the human being.
My personal conclusion: AI in companies, when well-thought-through and intelligently implemented, can be viewed as a real game changer and a competitive advantage, both from an economic perspective as well as from a personal perspective.