Growing at a phenomenal CAGR of 38 percent, the global market for artificial intelligence is anticipated to reach a whopping 1597 billion USD by the end of 2030. This fascinating insight by Precedence Research speaks volumes about the rising expanse of AI in the business world. Contemporary businesses see massive scope in AI to turn around things in an unimaginable way.
Needless to say, it is time that every business looks to embrace the change and welcome AI with open hands. From enhanced customer experiences with AI to improvised cybersecurity solutions, AI has wide-ranging applications for enterprises. In fact, as per Oberlo, more than 90 percent of the world’s leading corporations have invested in AI technologies to optimize business processes. Are you looking to make the most of AI business solutions as well?
AI can take your business to new heights but for that, you need to act in time to catch up with the trend. However, it is also true that integrating AI is no cakewalk. When AI comes into the workplace, it transforms the way things work in an organization hence marking a massive change. Having said that, this change implementation needs to be cautious, systematic, and meticulous.
This blog sheds light on a step-wise approach for successfully integrating AI into your business. To elucidate, this blog puts forth a clear roadmap for planning the integration of AI to its institutionalization in the workplace. So, let us get started without further ado.
A systematic approach: integrating AI into your enterprise
Visualize the success you aim to achieve
The first and foremost step in the direction of integrating AI into your business is to visualize the success that you wish to achieve with this transformation. You need to clearly define why is AI desirable in your business and what you wish to achieve with it.
When you have that clarity, you can set measurable goals with respect to the integration of AI technologies in the workplace. For instance, let us say your primary objective of deploying AI is to drive greater efficiency in recruitment. Having said that, you first need to identify the current inefficiencies in your company’s recruitment process and then visualize how AI can fill the gaps.
With this strategy, you will clearly know what you wish to accomplish with your AI investments. Further, this clarity will be of great help when you need to explain this change to all the stakeholders including your employees. Having a clear purpose, vision and visualization are essential to every change management process.
Ascertain the best AI tools for your business
After you have clearly established the areas where you will be deploying AI, the next step is to determine the AI solutions that are aligned with your requirements. Needless to say, there is a wide spectrum of AI solutions to choose from. However, not every tool or solution may turn out to be the best fit for your organization.
This is where effective research comes into the picture. With extensive and efficient research, you need to find the AI solutions that deliver on your requirements in the most comprehensive way. AI investments are expensive and that is a well-known fact. You do not want to regret making investments into solutions that do not match your expectations and the idea of the change behind the investments.
Especially if you are a small business, you do not want AI to be a recurring investment for your business. Hence, you should not rush into things and analyze all AI tools in a comprehensive manner before you make the final call.
Let us try to understand this through an example. Let’s say you are investing in AI tools to improve your enterprise network security. An AI solution that only predicts cyber threats to your enterprise server may not be effective enough. You rather need an AI tool that hunts threats, offers remediation actions, provides cloud security, and also protects your IoT devices from threats.
This example explains why you should go through all specifications and features linked to the AI solutions you are interested in.
Support your employees to overcome resistance
It is true that employees have a genuine fear that AI will replace their jobs. In fact, a large number of employees have the misconception that AI will swiftly replace humans in the corporate world. Having said that, your employees are likely to show high resistance to the integration of AI in the workplace.
This is where you need to respond with compassion and empathy. You need to support your employees and assist them in overcoming their resistance. For that, you will need to develop an effective communication strategy to win their confidence.
When you integrate AI solutions into the workplace, it is a major development transformation. In the best interest of that transformation, you want your employees to proactively participate in the change. But you first need to win their confidence and convince them that the change is to add to their efficiency and not to take away their job. You need to assist them in looking at the change positively as one of the essential tech upgrades in business.
Offer effective employee training
For your organization to benefit from AI in the real sense, your employees need to have the skills and the expertise to use AI. Your employees’ effectiveness in utilizing AI tools will have a direct impact on the success of the integration. The greater their comfort and expertise with sophisticated AI technologies the better the results.
The bottom line is that when you integrate AI solutions into your business, you need to provide extensive training to your employees in AI. The most important thing about employee training is its timing. If there is a long gap between the incorporation of AI solutions and AI training for employees, it may be too late to address the inefficiencies.
The best way forward is to have your employee prepared beforehand. The training program should be introduced before AI solutions are brought into the workplace. The second best case scenario is to introduce training immediately after the AI solutions are integrated. For advanced utilization of AI tools, employees need to be given advanced training.
Here, it is also essential to pay heed to the fact that the training program should not be too grim for your employees. The training program should be thoughtful and should not have unrealistic goals. Otherwise, your employees may begin to reel under unprecedented pressure which can affect their experience and engagement negatively.
Set measurable goals for continuous improvement
When you bring AI into the workplace, you would surely want to set measurable goals for the outcomes of AI to grow in an incremental manner. In fact, no change implementation is complete without planning for continuous improvement.
So, if you expect AI to contribute with 50 percent efficiency today, there is every reason why you should plan for that efficiency to scale to 80 or 90 percent in the near future. For that, you will need to set attainable SMART goals that can be tracked with key performance indicators. Besides, it is equally important to fix accountability when it comes to continuous improvement.
Hence, this is where you need to identify the change leaders and set accountability for making AI integration an incrementally successful change in the organization. The change leaders should have a clear roadmap and vision for getting the most out of the company’s AI investments. Also, they need to ensure that employees understand their responsibilities well in the context of facilitating continuous improvement. To encapsulate, for successful implementation of artificial intelligence-driven solutions into your business, you need a systematic approach. Given the kind of investment and sophistication involved, you certainly would not want to rush into things. Using the above steps, you can integrate and institutionalize artificial intelligence services in a worthwhile and reassuring way.
Infographics for Implementing AI in Business
Infographic credit-Chetu: BI Software Development
