Embrace AI For Business: A Phased And Incremental Approach To AI Adoption

Introduction

Since the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), there have been apprehensions about its impact on businesses and employees. With adoption rates increasing, and benefits being experienced across departments, it is important that businesses embrace this evolution and facilitate its adoption. This article explains and provides a phased roadmap on how to adopt AI into businesses through a human-centric approach.

The AI roadmap and its phases:

PHASE I: ALIGN TO THE BUSINESS GOAL

The AI roadmap begins by understanding the business goals for the year, in particular, with regards to AI and financial crime. These business goals can include areas such as precision of service, customer turnaround, automation of tasks, operational efficiency and effectiveness.

PHASE II: CULTIVATING AN AI MINDSET

The success of any program is heavily dependent on the core asset of the organisation – its people. Hence, this roadmap defines the involvement of the people at every level in the organisation and their expectations – leaders, managers/implementors, staff (customer facing executives). Below is a brief description of the contribution by each role in the organisation:

a. Leadership:

I. Envision AI to bring in operational efficiency, cost saving solutions

II. Lowered customer turn-around time

III. Improved customer satisfaction, empathy and market reputation

IV. Allocate funds for R&D or introduce AI by way of trainings, running internal campaigns, in short, cultivate AI culture

b. Managers/Implementors:

I. Convey a positive message in the staff about benefits or efficiency of AI

II. Removal of fears of job-loss amongst staff

III. Infrastructure assessment to support AI based technology, planning and execution

c. Staff:

I. Embrace AI: Convince about improved quality of work and job satisfaction

II. Encourage to identify business use cases for AI-based automation, such as mundane tasks, or have AI do the first level of work followed by four-eye (supervisory) check from the staff

III. Removal of fears of job-loss

PHASE III: ASSESS AI READINESS AND IDENTIFY THE USE CASES

A vital step when implementing AI is to assess the readiness of the organization on multiple fronts, such as technological preparedness, underlying infrastructure and professional skillsets.

This can be achieved by conducting brainstorming sessions in the business units, along with consulting with experts from Actimize. The expected outcome of these sessions is to shortlist the business use cases that align with the business goals identified in Phase I of the roadmap.

By integrating the results of the AI readiness assessment with the business use cases identified during brainstorming sessions, AI consultants empowered the organization to envision its path forward in AI adoption—anticipating future challenges and strategizing effective solutions

PHASE IV: PROOF OF CONCEPT (PoC)

To gain a better sense of AI and its impact on the organization, the solution providers can work on developing selective use cases as a proof of concept. This can help in projecting the outcome of the program, and also help to identify the likely road blockages in the journey ahead.

The technology providers can consider extracting the data, by removing PII, encrypting it and securely transmitting it to their environment to develop the PoC.

PHASE V: SOLUTIONING

Having presented the PoC to the organisation, and subject to approval, solution providers like Actimize can develop an AI-based solution for the business unit that achieves the business goal. Along with the solution, developers will host periodic engagement sessions with the organisation by way of status call, and generate artifacts about the solution.

PHASE VI: SOLUTION PACKAGING AND SUPPORT

As defined by industry standards, the AI-based solution package will be deployed to the organisation’s environment. Following the established processes, it will subsequently  undergo testing, and subsequent deployment to production, followed by customer support.

Benefits:

Having an AI roadmap helps to achieve the following benefits:

1. Overarching benefit of allowing businesses to deal with ever-changing dynamics of their industry and avoid becoming obsolete (out-of-race)
2. Operational efficiency achieved by AI adoption
3. Clarity on the goals and strategic allignmnent to the vision
4. Streamline processes, stakeholders’ involvements during execution of the program
5. Enriched customer experience
6. Stay ahead of competitors
7. Faster response to regulators and customers

In short, AI implementation allows organisations to do more with less , maximizing the value of data.

Conclusion:

This is a unique roadmap for Embracing AI within an organization, focusing on organizational psychology and employee engagement, ultimately enabling the organization to enrich the business and highlight their market presence.

How Actimize Professional Services can help

NICE Actimize offers significant expertise in providing tailor-made approaches to adopting AI, covering multi-dimensional aspects.

Aside from the human-centric approach to adopting AI into a business, Actimize also provides and offers training on AI related topics, developing AI-based solutions in the fin-crime domain. For any AI-based solution, we offer expertise in dealing with matters related to Ethical AI practices, Model Risk Management and/or Model Governance, assessing AI Readiness, Data Science staff augmentation services. We ensure a hand-held and smooth journey to adopting AI into business.