I believe that the most successful enterprises, over the next decade, will be those that use AI to enable new business models and do things differently, or a quantum better, than they do them now. This service portfolio provides the strategic foundation for the definition, development and management of AI solutions within medium and large organisations.
Business Strategy
- This is the development of commercial and operational strategy to enable the deployment of AI solutions into day to day business operations. It is usual to phase deployments of new technology; therefore, the service packages are modular.
- Feasibility Assessment – This covers the definition of one or more conceptual solutions, assessing the feasibility by developing a high-level business case and assessing the impact on business as usual operations, if the solution were to be deployed at scale.
- Proof of Concept – One or more proof of concepts are defined in a project definition document. This includes acceptance criteria, costings, milestones, staffing and governance model as well as a risk assessment and plans for mitigation.
- Deployment Strategy – Development of the strategy for deployment at scale. This provides a detailed investment appraisal, target operating model and program plan for the development, deployment and adoption of an AI solution.
Management Strategy
- This is a broad piece of work to define the management strategy required for your organisation to use AI extensively; the work addresses the structural and human considerations including:
- Governance model
- Organisation design
- Critical success factors
- Skills Development
- Skills Acquisition
- Staff transition plans
Ethics Policy
- This includes a detailed risk assessment covering (i) how the deployment of AI could affect the perception of your brand through any potential societal impacts (ii) the potential for there being unintended bias in any AI solutions used and (iii) the effect of the AI on employment and any broader skills erosion.
- The policy defines strategies for addressing the issues uncovered and provides a detailed framework for the identification and mitigation of unintended bias.
Data Management Strategy
- In order to get the most out of AI it is imperative to feed it with structured data that is labelled consistently so that the algorithms continue to improve their capability. The acquisition and management of suitable data sets is potentially a source of competitive advantage, especially if the data is, or can be made, unique. This often requires a business-wide approach to consider the opportunities that can be derived from data and an operational strategy to realise these opportunities. Recognising that customer organisations may need to undertake a change journey this service package is modular and includes:
- Vision and Opportunity Assessment – Defines the data sets that could be made available for developing AI solutions through engagement across the business functions as well as IT. This work includes a high level assessment of how these data sets could enable AI solutions and the business advantage that these solutions could offer.
- Data Acquisition, Processing and Storage Strategy – This is a comprehensive work package that defines the detailed strategy for acquiring, processing and storing data so that it is usable for specific AI solutions. This includes aspects such as data formatting and labelling, data storage and security and compliance with legislation such as data privacy and GDPR.
- Data Governance Strategy – Development of a data governance and management model to support the deployment of ai at scale.