AI Guidelines for Businesses: Using AI in Your Own Company
Artificial intelligence (AI) is one—if not the—key technology of our decade. Technological advances in this field are not only fundamentally changing our economies, industries and markets, but are also exerting enormous influence on traditional business practices, many of which will disappear, while others will be transformed or completely reinvented.
AI Beyond Autonomous Driving and Language Assistants
Behind the notion of “AI” lies a multitude of different methods, procedures, and technologies, which have a variety of definitions.
Gartner, for instance, defines the term this way: “Artificial intelligence (AI) applies advanced analysis and logic-based techniques, including machine learning, to interpret events, support and automate decisions, and to take actions.” By comparison, Forrester defines the term as follows: “Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to fundamentally remake the nature of firms, employment, and how work gets done. Get insights into the development of AI.”
But what exactly does the use of AI mean for a company’s management, for an employee in a call center, for a doctor, or for scientific research staff?
The areas of application are so diverse that it is often difficult to find the right point of departure. After all, AI technologies can be used in virtually all sectors of a company to make processes more efficient or to find new approaches for mastering tasks.
In order for AI to be successfully integrated and to achieve the desired success, companies should carefully consider the initial steps. With more than 14 years of experience in implementing information insight and cognitive services based on innovative technologies, we have discovered that starting with clearly defined use cases in the relevant specialist department is the key step that yields the best results and has a long-term positive impact on the entire project.
Consider these simple steps:
- Identify and Determine the Use Case
Companies are looking into the use of AI because it is a core element for boosting efficiency and is an integral part of digitalization that, in short, can simply no longer be ignored. Too often, we encounter a situation where a company commissions an evaluation without thinking specifically about which problems will be solved or which business processes need to be optimized. Instead of being blinded by the vast capabilities of the solutions offered, consideration should be given to where (which use cases) AI could be applied and which common pain points can be eliminated by using it.
The first step towards sustainable implementation should therefore be to pinpoint which problems need to be solved within the company, which can be improved through the use of AI, and which objectives need to be achieved. It will quickly become apparent that there are several possible points of departure for implementation. Dealing with all of them at the same time, however, is not particularly efficient. It makes sense to select a specific use case from a particular department to start with and then to consider how it can be optimized through the use of AI.