AI for Business: Tips From 4 Leaders

AI Implementation in Business

While most CIOs are testing or investing in AI, a majority haven't seen measurable ROI, according to the Nash Squared/Harvey Nash Digital Leadership Report. Nash Squared CIO Ankur Anand said leaders understand AI but struggle to apply it to create value. Four business leaders shared tips for using AI to address significant business challenges.

Aligning AI with Business Priorities

EY's Joe Depa advises aligning AI use cases with top business priorities, which should be a continuous process. He suggests focusing on a top 10 list of use cases, regularly reviewed with senior executives, to maintain focus and avoid investing in solutions without clear ROI. Depa says to avoid simply solving cool problems with AI without a solid business case.

AI Use Cases and Innovation

Adobe CIO Cindy Stoddard said her IT team uses AI across various areas and collaborates with the business to identify new applications. Her team leverages AI to analyze past IT needs and provide recommendations for future service demands.
The IT team also uses AI in testing by creating reusable scripts to automate processes. For new applications, hackathons help discover emerging technology uses within IT and the broader business. Stoddard's team partners with business colleagues and external vendors to select the best projects, develop them, and assess their value before deploying them into production systems.

Experimentation and Safe Sandboxes

Caroline Carruthers, CEO at Carruthers and Jackson, emphasized embracing innovation and experimentation to identify the right AI use cases. She suggests creating a safe sandbox to test emerging technologies and understand their potential within the organization. Carruthers highlights the importance of focusing on the right areas and learning from failures, provided they are not too costly. She advocates for AI initiatives to be part of larger projects aimed at overcoming significant organizational challenges, emphasizing small, iterative, and safe implementations.

Education and Awareness

Tobias Sammereyer, team lead for performance engineering at XXXLutz, cautioned against overconfidence in easy-to-use AI tools and stressed the need to educate people on AI's capabilities and limitations. Business leaders should ensure their teams understand AI's benefits and drawbacks before applying it. Sammereyer advises finding a middle ground between hype and disbelief, educating people before using AI, and double-checking results, as AI can make mistakes. He notes the importance of feeding AI systems with reliable data and being critical in evaluating the answers provided.