If AI is going to work, businesses need to upskill their employees advises Ronnie Hamilton from Climb Channel Solutions Ireland.
When it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), it’s not the ambition that’s lacking; it’s the execution.
Its potential is clear, but its practical application isn’t so apparent or straightforward. SMEs are eager to leverage it – and quite rightly so – but having the skills to ensure AI success is a whole other conversation.
“As with anything in business, a successful AI strategy requires careful planning and preparation”
The bottom line is that for many companies in most sectors, there is no choice but to implement AI.
However, business leaders need to look at the full picture. It’s not just about investing in the technology; it’s about assessing maturity, identifying opportunity and tackling inadequacy through people.
Assessing maturity
Whilst the majority of SMEs are probably having the AI conversation, if not implementing it in some shape or form, mature AI businesses have taken their efforts beyond experimentation towards integration and innovation. Implementation will be widespread rather than isolated, holistic instead of ad-hoc.
These companies won’t just be getting individuals to use ChatGPT for the odd task or seeing how efforts go, AI will be embedded into operational processes across the entire organisation. It will also be underpinned by a strategy which incorporates robust governance and adequate resourcing.
However, a recent Climb Channel Solutions Ireland survey – involving 600 AI/IT decision-makers across Ireland, the UK and Germany – revealed that AI maturity is a long way off across the board. In fact, 0% of respondents said their company is already AI-mature.
Identifying opportunity
As with anything in business, a successful AI strategy requires careful planning and preparation. Business leaders need to think about what challenges AI might help to solve, what processes it could streamline and what benefits they want to enjoy from it. After all, AI usage needs to support overall business goals.
According to our research, the leading aims of AI adoption are boosting productivity (34%), saving costs (34%) and increasing revenues (32%). Some 31% are adopting AI to enhance customer experience, with a quarter (25%) deploying it to combat human error.
In other words, a lot of AI objectives focus around the people piece. It’s therefore crucial to identify use cases that meet the specific requirements of your organisation and empower your people by enabling them to be more productive, efficient and accurate. That means getting their buy-in and speaking to them about what solutions might help, as well as what knowledge they need to engage with and leverage same.
Tackling inadequacy
One of the most common issues stifling AI success seems to be the AI skills gap – a gap which undermines organisational ambition with poor execution. Given that our research revealed that 30% of AI/IT decision-makers said training was a core element that their company needed to reach AI maturity, this is an area that business leaders need to address.
Among those who think training is needed to make their company AI-mature, 38% said defining a strategy and AI readiness would benefit them most, with 35% citing technical development. More familiarity with AI ranked high, as 34% said using such solutions in daily life or tasks would be beneficial and the same proportion of the opinion that improving techniques for interacting with them would help.
This means that alongside the technologies and processes, SMEs need to equip people with the skills and knowledge to use AI effectively, ethically and securely. This could be achieved through hosting regular training sessions or collaborating with vendors and reseller partners.
Driven by an AI-forward workforce, SMEs will in turn benefit from increased performance, innovation and potentially business growth. But they must embark on this journey now, implementing technology and getting employees involved.
This will hopefully then lead to further conversations about what more can our people do with AI and for the business, rather than looking back wondering where it all went wrong or just how do we catch up with the competition.
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