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Artificial intelligence has made a lasting impact on the way businesses operate worldwide. It’s not a niche technology anymore, but a powerful tool with a potential to make your company more efficient and give you an edge over competition.
Almost everyone recognises AI’s value and tries to implement it, but how come 85% of these initiatives fail?
The answer lies in how AI is implemented.
If the business can’t clearly define a problem, using artificial intelligence to solve it won’t lead to any good outcomes. To avoid failure, ask yourself: do you even need AI?
See also: How can customers reduce risks when implementing AI
Does your business need AI?
Artificial intelligence isn’t a “magic wand” that can fix any problem. It’s not a solution in search of a problem either. If you look at cases of successful AI implementation, you’ll see a trend: AI works best when applied to specific, repeatable challenges.
To see whether your business needs AI or not, ask yourself:
Are your teams wasting time on repetitive tasks?
One of the most popular applications of AI is automation. Given the proper data, AI can analyse it to improve the decision-making process, eliminating repetitiveness from employees’ workflow.
Do you have more data than you use?
In the digital age, almost every business has to deal with huge amounts of data. AI can analyse reports, find patterns, and even predict trends — all thanks to large data flows. On top of that, finishing these tasks won’t take days, but minutes.
Do you resolve issues proactively or keep collecting technical debt?
A proactive approach to resolving challenges is what differentiates successful businesses from others. While people might struggle making data-driven predictions, AI automated processes can prevent potential risks without human error.
If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”, then you can improve your business with AI. Philipp Gerbert, CEO of TUM Venture Labs, has shared his insights on how businesses benefit from AI adoption.
Benefits of AI readiness
You might think that AI readiness is only about ticking the checkbox before AI adoption, but it goes deeper than that. Assessment helps you in multiple ways: from saving your money to ensuring your measurable outcomes. Here are some of the examples:
Avoid costly missteps. Most businesses assume that they can benefit from AI. AI readiness tests this assumption specifically for your business. Proactive approach prevents you from building systems that never move from PoC stage.
Optimise data strategy. AI readiness assessment helps evaluate the ability to manage data, which improves the overall data quality for every system in your company.
Select the right AI approach. Every business faces unique problems, which requires different kind of AI model. AI readiness helps you determine which one will be a perfect fit based the data you have, required model’s accuracy, and your in-house infrastructure.
Streamline implementation. Planning out the deployment and further operations will ensure that all your systems work in tandem.
Ensure scalability and integration. Scalability should be a part of the core AI design. Planning for how it will be used in the future ensures that your AI solution won’t become isolated and will always stay entangled with company workflow.
Quantify business impact. One of the biggest challenges in AI projects is defining success. AI readiness helps identify clear, measurable outcomes and establishes the metrics for future AI evaluation.
After establishing that your business needs AI, it’s time to determine whether it’s ready for AI.
See also: Implementing AI: Is it worth it? A step-by-step guide to AI implementation
Is your business ready for AI?
AI readiness is a service that helps businesses prepare for AI integration. Its main focus is on ensuring your data and infrastructure are compatible with AI and addressing any potential challenges that may arise during the adoption process.
Simply put, it shows whether your business can successfully implement AI. It starts off with Discovery phase, a process of analysing your business and seeking answers to these questions.
How mature is your data?
AI-powered tools require a lot of high-quality, clean data. You can’t use scattered spreadsheets or incomplete records and expect AI to perform well.
Check your data for errors, duplicates, missing inputs, and properly label it. Once done, the information can be structured into a dataset and then used by an AI model for training.
Does your company culture encourage experimentation?
Building AI projects on your own can be risky, if you don’t have a proper experience. Successful AI implementation relies on testing new ideas and learning from past mistakes, which takes time that most businesses don’t have.
A good call is to find, experienced partner that can support you during AI adoption and ensure your success. This approach will give you best from both worlds: your teams will familiarise themselves with AI, and your business will avoid pitfalls during AI adoption process.
Do you know where to start small?
One of the most common reasons for AI adoption failure is unrealistic goals. It’s wishful thinking to expect that your business will become fully AI-integrated overnight.
Set the right objectives, start with well-defined problems that have clear value, and slowly scale from there.
Do you have in-house AI experts?
It’s true that you don’t need a whole in-house team of data scientists to start your AI initiatives. However, you will definitely need a partner that understands your business challenges and knows how to use AI to solve them.
A reliable partner with proper experience and expertise can guide you through AI adoption process and help you avoid pitfalls in the process.
Common pitfalls in evaluating AI readiness
As a rule, businesses may unintentionally oversee important issues during integration process. The lack of experience with AI models and rushed adoption could backfire, leading to unexpected costs and underperforming AI.
Here are a couple of pitfalls you might miss.
AI complexity issues
Sometimes businesses underestimate how much effort is needed to use AI-powered tools efficiently. You can’t just make your employees learn the interface and call it a day; a successful adoption requires additional employee training and upskilling.
Investing in your employee skills will prevent AI models from being underutilised or misapplied.
AI integration issues
Integrating AI, especially into legacy systems, isn’t as straightforward as it might seem. You need compatible data formats, network configurations, and most importantly — infrastructure to run and scale AI workloads efficiently.
Make sure that AI outputs align with existing systems and don’t break your current decision-making processes.
Regulatory and legal issues
Businesses that work in regulated industries, such as healthcare and finance, have to ensure AI meets compliance standards as well.
Failing to consider the model’s compliance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or Data Privacy and Protection Act (DPPA) can prematurely end your AI journey. On top of compliance with existing regulations in your region, businesses should stay agile, since AI laws and regulations are fairly young and can often change.
AI cost underestimation
The cost of AI does not end at the licensing fee or a vendor contract. Such initiatives go hand in hand with expenses such as:
cloud computing charges
third-party API licensing
employee training expenses
consulting fees
data acquisition fees
The list can go on, but the point stays the same: it’s easy to underestimate how much full AI adoption will cost. By partnering with Altamira, you don’t have to wonder — AI PoC will cost you $10,000.
AI security issues
AI systems are the prime targets for cyberattacks. Malicious actors are always on the lookout for ways to acquire sensitive information, especially from unprotected AI models.
Security should be a part of AI integration from the day one. Implement a robust encryption and access controls. Make sure that both your data and AI model has a secure firewall.
Final words
AI is genuinely a valuable tool that can benefit almost any business. However, the successful use of AI-powered tools lies in assessment and preparation. Take a good look at your business and ask yourself whether you can improve it with AI.
Proper AI readiness assessment is a key to successful, and most importantly — beneficial use of AI in the future.
How Altamira can help
If you want to assess your business’s AI readiness, take the next step by adopting the latest AI-powered tools, or test out your new ideas, our approach is guaranteed to reduce your stress.
Push the boundaries of what’s possible with AI. A decade-long expertise in AI development combined with our business-first approach will elevate your company and help you avoid common pitfalls.
Results in days. We start working on clickable prototypes even before the contract begins to accelerate delivery and demonstrate our commitment.
Be always in control. We build trust through transparency in the way that we communicate to guarantee you stay updated and informed, so you’ll never have to worry about the details.
Get in touch and get a free expert consultancy.
