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We have\u00a0officially\u00a0entered the era of \u201capplied AI\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0For\u00a0many\u00a0boards and C-suite leaders, understanding how to gain the most value from large language models and agentic AI is now the\u00a0single most important\u00a0strategic challenge of the day.\u00a0From\u00a0scaling up pilots to securing investment, driving measurable business impact to bringing employees along for the ride, the road to AI maturity is fraught with challenges.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
To dive\u00a0further into this topic, and understand how enterprises are finding successes with AI, we\u00a0convened\u00a0a panel of technology leaders to share their insights and advice.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
One problem routinely cited by executives looking to make good on their AI investments\u00a0is that they can get stuck in \u2018pilot purgatory\u2019,\u00a0having\u00a0started\u00a0a number of\u00a0exploratory projects before finding they\u00a0won\u2019t\u00a0work on a larger scale.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Rahul Shah, global chief digital and information officer at Mars Pet Nutrition, the\u00a0key is to break the process down into simpler steps. \u201cWe ended up saying: instead of\u00a0immediately\u00a0focusing on scale,\u00a0let\u2019s\u00a0define the five big bets\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0going to make. Then we made the shift from pilots to scale, then from use cases to capability, and finally from information to decisions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
To identify these \u201cbig bets\u201d, our panelists agreed that the best way was to delve into how employees are\u00a0actually working\u00a0day to day and\u00a0seeking out\u00a0opportunities to lighten the load.\u00a0\u201cYou can work top-down, but you can also work bottom-up,\u201d says\u00a0Ursula Soritsch-Renier, group chief\u00a0digital\u00a0and information officer at Saint-Gobain, \u201cusing\u00a0pain points\u00a0employees\u00a0throughout the business\u00a0encounter every day.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nigel Richardson, chief information and digitization officer at Reckitt,\u00a0emphasizes that centering AI projects in people\u2019s everyday work is the key to avoiding pilot purgatory. \u201cDoing pilots is incredibly quick and easy\u2014and you can do such impressive things\u00a0really quickly. To\u00a0really build something that is scalable is a whole different world. What we found useful is going deep into processes and end-to-end workflows and making sure\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0not just throwing new exciting tools in but really understanding how people work and how we can reinvent that work in the future using AI.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not everyone agrees, however, that pilots are the new AI-related pitfall. \u201cI love pilots, I think pilots are great\u201d says Bruno Zerbib, chief\u00a0technology\u00a0and innovation officer at Orange. \u201cI hate the pressure of trying to please people by going\u00a0fast\u00a0so everyone feels we\u00a0are progressing at the \u2018right\u2019 pace\u2014the reality is there is no playbook.\u00a0We\u2019re\u00a0all discovering and\u00a0learning\u00a0and the most important thing is being humble and not caving to pressure to\u00a0come up with\u00a0random milestones to prove we are a great \u2018AI company.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou can work top-down, but you can also work bottom-up\u201d<\/p>\n Ursula Soritsch-Renier, group chief\u00a0digital\u00a0and information officer at Saint-Gobain<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Practical takeaway<\/strong>:\u00a0\u201cPick the right business problem, secure top-down sponsorship, and then make sure you really go into workflows in depth,\u201d says Richardson.\u00a0And\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0be scared of\u00a0pilot purgatory, see it for what it is\u2014a place to explore\u00a0AI\u2019s manifold possibilities.<\/p>\n The reason Orange\u2019s Zerbib is cautious when it comes to rolling out\u00a0AI programs\u00a0at scale is because he recognizes the second key challenge\u00a0facing leaders: bringing your people on the journey with you.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to be very careful with the notion of going fast at the expense of doing things the right way,\u201d he says. \u201cAt the moment, we are picking the right job lines [to augment with AI], the ones which we think will give us return on investment, and they are acting as trailblazers.\u00a0We\u2019re\u00a0not going to solve world\u00a0hunger,\u00a0but we want to have\u00a0great stories\u00a0that people did not lose their jobs but, on the\u00a0contrary,\u00a0AI made their life more fun than ever.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n At Saint-Gobain,\u00a0Soritsch-Renier acknowledges that the workforce is often less\u00a0literate from a technology perspective, as the organization is an industrial business focused on construction materials and, as such,\u00a0hasn\u2019t\u00a0been called to embrace technology at the same level as other industries.\u00a0Here, there is a huge opportunity to build enthusiasm among more skeptical colleagues. \u201cOur people are spending far too much time on administrative work,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you can reallocate the same capacity,\u00a0resources\u00a0and effort\u00a0you\u2019ve\u00a0used for processing accounts receivable into\u00a0cross-selling or upselling, then there is opportunity there.\u00a0As long as\u00a0people are willing to evolve, learn and grow, there is no risk.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Richardson agrees,\u00a0citing\u00a0particular wins\u00a0in the company\u2019s R&D department. \u201cWe were finding that 30-40% of our scientists\u2019 time was\u00a0being spent\u00a0on documentation,\u201d he says. \u201cThat was a huge bottleneck. So, we developed an agentic AI solution called Write-It and something that was taking days now takes minutes and frees up their time to do much more innovative work.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to be very careful with the notion of going fast at the expense of doing things the right way\u201d<\/p>\n Bruno Zerbib, chief\u00a0technology\u00a0and innovation officer at Orange<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n For leaders\u00a0looking to communicate this message to their wider workforce, Shah has a positive\u00a0framing. \u201cAll the jobs which are there to coordinate information from one place to another are going to be diminishing,\u201d he says. \u201cBut this will create more choices than we have ever seen. Your human judgement is going to become even more important.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Practical takeaway<\/strong>: It is within the C-suite\u2019s gift to transform the daily working lives of their staff by making work less mundane and more rewarding.\u00a0Lean into this. And\u00a0get the\u00a0messaging right.\u00a0For Zerbib,\u00a0paraphrasing\u00a0Nvidia\u2019s Jensen Huang can be helpful for this: \u201cYou will not be replaced by AI. Your job will be replaced by someone who knows how to use AI.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Another\u00a0common problem\u00a0for leaders is dealing with the pressure to innovate or the hesitancy to invest from the board.\u00a0Executives must therefore learn how to communicate the benefits of AI\u00a0clearly and comprehensively.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn my experience, the board just wants to grow the business,\u201d says Shah. \u201cTechnology is just one lever. Often the board\u2019s questions around AI are not about what use cases\u00a0you\u2019re\u00a0developing but about how you are growing and protecting the business.\u00a0Our job is to separate the signal from the noise.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n One\u00a0clear way\u00a0to do this is through regular communication. \u201cWe are very focused on the tangible business cases of our major AI investments,\u201d says Richardson. \u201cEvery quarter we review all the AI initiatives and look at the benefits we said we\u2019d get, what we\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0getting, and how we can continue to improve and learn.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The clearer the business benefit, the easier it is to have the conversation, of course. At Saint-Gobain,\u00a0one solid example of this for\u00a0Soritsch-Renier\u00a0is an AI tool which makes it easier for\u00a0employees to\u00a0read through\u00a0tenders for big projects.\u00a0\u201cWe used our tool to scan 12,000 tenders and we can now select leads which are 15% more qualified for us\u00a0and from which we see a 10% higher conversion rate.\u201d These are numbers which are bound to excite any board.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n It is, however, key to\u00a0be\u00a0just as open about where projects are struggling as where they are succeeding. \u201cWe\u2019re not trying to tell them fairy tales,\u201d says Zerbib. \u201cThat can be very dangerous right now\u2014honesty is super important.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Practical takeaway<\/strong>:\u00a0As with any important relationship, the secret to building trust and securing board buy-in is simple: \u201cCommunicate, communicate, communicate,\u201d says\u00a0Soritsch-Renier.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Tech #leaders #moving #hype #Heres #whats #working<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We have\u00a0officially\u00a0entered the era of \u201capplied AI\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0For\u00a0many\u00a0boards and C-suite leaders, understanding how to gain the most value from large language models and agentic AI is now the\u00a0single most important\u00a0strategic challenge… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1098,1099,540,6246,22,1802,3140,5546,729,602,6991,3029],"class_list":["post-6220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-chief-information-officer-cio","tag-chief-technology-officer-cto","tag-heres","tag-hype","tag-investment","tag-leaders","tag-leadership","tag-londonarticles","tag-moving","tag-tech","tag-whats","tag-working"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\nAI as organizational transformation<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h2>\n
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\nBuilding credibility for AI investment<\/strong><\/h2>\n