It is difficult to believe that 2020 is coming to a close. With only a brief time left to set an intentional plan for 2021, now is the time to begin considering (or reconsidering) how you will implement artificial intelligence (AI) into your organization's goals for the new year. The question is no longer, “Is AI useful?” but, “How can AI be useful?” We have reached a point in technological advancement, that incorporating AI solutions into your organization is essential for success.
There is a recurring theme that surrounds artificial intelligence, pointing to the undeniable fact that it is a disruptive science imperative in the digital transformation of companies. If you are looking ahead at 2021 and not planning for a digital transformation, you are putting your organization at existential risk. Gartner predicts that by 2021, AI will create $2.9 trillion in business value and generate 6.2 billion hours in worker productivity.
How Artificial Intelligence can transform your organization
When companies plan to adopt artificial intelligence or intelligent solutions, you should incorporate the following steps to begin a digital transformation. To rise above the competition, incorporate solutions that transform your operating procedures. Here are the eight steps Alphanumeric recommends.
1. AI transformation strategy
Artificial intelligence, the pinnacle of digital transformation, will continue to be critical to business success for many years to come. Your organization should start thinking now about how to inject artificial intelligence into your corporate DNA and leverage AI strategically to transform your organization. This means changing your corporate DNA so that creating and working with AI is second nature to everyone in your company. Gartner reports that large enterprise organizations will struggle with recognizing and adapting to digital transformation. The sooner you start, the better opportunity you have to achieve the benefits.
To help you with your digital transformation, Alphanumeric offers a valuable tool available for download that allows you to realize your omni-channel strategy. The CX Ops Framework guides you through identifying team members that can act quickly to create content and own specific segments of the organization's operation, defines goals, details many important aspects of customer discovery, and dives into the how-to of combining knowledge, automation, and self-service, with the human touch.
2. AI Education for your organization
Education should include a deep dive into what makes a successful AI use case versus those that are unsuccessful, how to overcome obstacles to success, and how to speed the path from concept to value. Create that “Innovation Center of Excellence (COE)” and surround yourself with a team of experts.
By using your team and setting goals you make sure that stakeholders throughout the organization are informed of key milestones and progress towards your goals. Through Alphanumeric’s CX Ops Framework you can build out your CX Ops team, define your “North Star” goals, and create a measurable and time-bound system that guides you into a reporting cadence that includes key stakeholders.
3. Value-focused AI
Each project your company undertakes should create a measurable impact on revenue, productivity, and customer experience. Rank potential use cases based on both feasibility and value. Try a few areas where you know you will get “quick hits” – it becomes easier to upsell to other areas of your organization.
4. AI you can trust
Artificial intelligence needs to be human-friendly, intuitive, and easy to understand. Companies must do their homework before establishing a process, or selecting a partner. Enabling technology must produce AI that everyone in your organization can explain, defend, and that is consistent with your ethics and values.
5. AI solutions that increase productivity
If your organization has experts, try to make them even more productive by automating as many of the manual, repetitive tasks as possible so they can focus on delivering the highest value.
At Alphanumeric we have successfully implemented the Alphanumeric Virtual Assistant (chatbot) on more than 20 of our life sciences client’s websites. The chatbot has given patients access to information 24/7x365, which has released agents of performing repetitive activities and streamlined answers to patients’ and HCPs’ frequently asked questions (FAQs). To read more about the real-time results our clients GSK and ViiV Healthcare are seeing visit this blog.
6. Ease workload with an AI-focused team
Demand for artificial intelligence exceeds the capacity of most dedicated data science teams. Organizations need to identify employees who can fill the talent gap. Capable and motivated business analysts who are trained, enabled, and empowered can help build AI and can help democratize data science. You would be surprised how many great skill sets you have in your organization. Seek them out and make them part of your Innovation COE team!
7. Accelerate your AI path to production
NLP with machine learning (ML) models drifts over time, and data changes quickly. A centralized machine learning operations and governance center as a complement to traditional operations is becoming more critical to helping get a greater number of models into deployment. Ensure you have a team that monitors the data and feeds the model for continuous learning.
8. Seek an AI Partner you can trust
One of the biggest challenges companies are facing is choosing the right partner. There are over 8,000 vendors in this space. How do you choose? Ensure you look at the technology platform and years of experience in NLP, but most importantly, you need to control your data and your system. Flexibility is the key to making this technology successful.
At Alphanumeric, we are the stewards of your data and your service to patients and HCPs. Our motto is, "Side by side on the vision. Full responsibility for the outcome." This means we partner with you from the beginning to understand your goals and create a plan for getting there. We are transparent in helping you understand the progress towards those goals along the way.
Becoming an AI-powered organization
Being AI-powered means taking thousands of optimized decisions which are automatically collected every day and using them to efficiently run your business while they provide you with a strong, competitive advantage. The size of benefits for those who move early into AI as a strategy will build-up in later years at the expense of firms with limited to no adoption.
Identify all opportunities across your enterprise to measure impact in revenue, workforce productivity, and customer experience. Look at as many opportunities as are justified by business value and practicality. By following this approach and equipping your teams with an AI-powered patient, HCP, and even employee experience, your company will infuse AI into its culture and position itself to capture the growth that is available only to those that take advantage of the power of AI.
For a presentation on Alphanumeric’s intelligent solutions (AI, machine learning, NLP, and more) contact us now! We can also build a demo customized to any opportunities you’ve identified or help you select the right one.