Four Tips for Successful A I Deployment

1: Star t with a targeted use case or proof of concept (POC) to build excitement .

When selecting an initial A I use c ase, dat a teams might choose the low-hanging fruit the easie s t project that provide s the greate s t reward. A logic al place to st ar t might be in high- dat a areas of the company such as the marketing team, which may already have a good repre sent ation of cus tomer dat a and be relatively more sophis tic ated in it s use of analy tic s

Preetha Sekharan, Unum’s head of digit al s trateg y, and her team to intelligently transcribe document s during the insurance quoting proce s s “Generating excitement around that POC and the POC needed,” she explains. “Then we were able to obt ain f unding to st ar t working on sc ale.”

Still , the barriers to A I adoption may be more cultural than technic al . “The technic al barriers have dropped dramatic ally,” explains R yan Taylor, senior vice pre sident of enterprise dat a and analy tic s at WE X “For those that have the c apit al to spend on it , A I c an be built into solutions in a variet y of acce s sible ways.” When thinking about sc aling , advoc ate s of A I mus t appeal to individual s and teams who may not recognize how winning the heart s and minds of the busine s s teams is to underst and the critic al problems and help demons trate how dat a and A I c an help addre s s those problems

2: Involve all stakeholders in the ‘ test and learn’ process.

To ga in b roa d e m p loye e ac c e pt a n c e of a n ew A I to o l , u s e r s mu s t b e invo lve d f ro m d ay o n e. “ We h a d to en g in e e r h ow we d id thi s p roje c t to m a ke s ure pe o p le we re co mfo r t a b le w it h it , ” s ay s S e k h a r a n U n um a s ke d a n a ly s t s to s p e n d t h re e m o nt h s s tu d y in g t h e o ut p u t of t h e A I to o l a n d thi s a llowe d t h e m p ro d u c e d h ig h - q u a lit y re s u lt s .

There is a clear challenge here to overcome what David Messinger, director and associate actuar y at Full scopeRMS, call s the “not my day job problem.” How do you involve employees in innovation around A I while allowing time for them to accomplish their day-to-day tasks?