Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming businesses of all sizes across all industries. From automating tasks to improving customer service to developing new products and services, AI is helping companies become more efficient, productive, and innovative. However, there are questions and pitfalls associated with this sudden emergence of new technologies. Businesses want to rush products or services associated with AI without consideration for research, goals, costs, or sometimes even purpose.
Starting an assessment of AI for your business is akin to reading a map. With so many different AI technologies and applications available, it can be difficult for businesses to know where to start, much less where the results of their efforts might end up.
Prowess Consulting’s experience can help inform these decisions. We have not only helped our clients develop better communications to reach their customers, but we’ve also shared our knowledge through testing and research. As you undertake your journey to understanding AI, consider the following important landmarks along the way.
Identify Your Business Goals
What are you trying to achieve with AI? You should begin by defining clear, reachable goals.
When it comes to building an approach to AI, our goals at Prowess are 1) increase our understanding of the technology, terms, use cases, and implications involved with creating technical content, 2) evaluate which tools would work best for our current processes, and whether they would improve our workflow and output, and 3) avoid major disruptions in our services by taking a phased approach to engaging in AI technology.
Once you have a clear understanding of your goals, you can start to identify specific AI technologies and applications that can help you to reach those goals.
Assess Your Current Capabilities
What data and resources do you have available to support AI adoption? Consider your goals, then compare those goals to the resources your business has now and those that you might need to acquire. Your goals might require training, in addition to acquiring new software, hardware, or disk storage. It’s important to have a realistic understanding of your current capabilities before you start investing in AI.
At Prowess Consulting, our assessment of generative AI initially began with concerns about supporting and managing our own AI tools. We have an in-depth, highly capable in-house IT team who established it would be possible to host our own AI infrastructure. But as we explored different options, we soon realized that, for our line of business, we could take advantage of existing corporate licenses to support our specific AI needs for content development. This allows our IT team to implement or develop AI solutions using familiar tools such as Microsoft’s stack.
Determine the Ethical and Legal Implications of Using AI
It is important to consider the ethical and legal implications of using AI before you deploy any AI systems. In our own journey of assessing AI, ethical and legal concerns were part of a larger discussion. Our internal AI team needed to ensure our usage of specific AI tools addressed security and privacy requirements from the start. Our business is based upon working with a variety of technology companies in a confidential manner and maintaining confidentiality of the information that our customers provide to us. Any AI solution, tool, program, or project we utilize needs to maintain client confidentiality and follow client non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and privacy rules. In addition, we’ve developed an internal AI Responsibility and Guidelines document that our employees are required to adhere to.
Start Small—Don't Try to Boil the Ocean
Focus on one or two specific areas where AI can make a big impact on your business. AI assistants can help write business letters and contractual correspondence, handle emails, perform data-integration tasks, or offer suggestions when developing business presentations. AI coupled with software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings can monitor network loads and connectivity, handle banking and e-commerce tasks, or manage big data tasks. Once you have achieved success in these areas, you can gradually expand your AI adoption.
At Prowess Consulting, we focused on specific generative AI workflows that mapped to our own internal processes. Our phases comprised:
- Research (answering the question of what AI is for us)
- Evaluation of a variety of tools
- Selection of a specific tool, and integrating that tool into our processes
- Internal training
- Roll out to a focused set of job types and team members
- Use and evaluation of output
Experiment and Learn
AI is a rapidly evolving field. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different AI technologies and applications. The more you learn, the better equipped you will be to use AI to achieve your business goals. Here are several examples of how businesses can use AI to improve their bottom line:
- Automate tasks. AI can be used to automate repetitive tasks, such as data entry, customer service inquiries, and order processing. This can free employees to focus on more strategic and value-added activities.
- Improve customer service. AI can be used to personalize customer interactions, provide real-time support, and identify and resolve customer issues quickly and efficiently.
- Develop new products and services. AI can be used to analyze data and identify trends, develop new product ideas, and customize products and services to meet the needs of individual customers.
- Improve operational efficiency. AI can be used to optimize supply chains, reduce waste, and improve production processes.
- Make better decisions. AI can be used to analyze large amounts of data and identify patterns and insights that would be difficult or impossible to spot manually. This can help businesses make better decisions about everything from product development to marketing to pricing.
To Learn More
If you’re not sure where to start, there are resources available to help your business learn more about AI and how to implement it. Prowess Consulting can help your business develop and implement AI solutions. By understanding the goals, resources, data, and ethical and legal implications of AI, businesses can develop a more strategic approach to AI. This can help them achieve the greatest benefits from AI while minimizing the risks.
Our experience so far at Prowess Consulting provides intriguing insights into the full potential of utilizing the right AI technology for a company like ours. The environment is still fragile, however, and the tools, models, and applications involved are evolving and changing daily.
A key learning point to remember is AI is not a replacement for the experience that comes from knowledge and discipline. AI can more quickly create content, improve drafts, and add value to your projects, but the hard work of refinement, finesse, and expertise remains.
As a company that knows technology, Prowess Consulting can be your guide to sort, validate, refine, and clarify complex ideas into succinct customer value. Our goal is to use the tools offered through AI as opportunities to advance your business needs. Let us help you face these new and complex challenges.
For additional reading, we suggest our technical research study, “How Your Business Can Be Prepared to Embrace AI Today.”
To learn more about what we do at Prowess Consulting, view our latest research and follow us on LinkedIn.
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