How ready is your business for AI?
Have you deployed tools already? Are your people adopting them? Are they driving the efficiencies they are designed to deliver?
In the last two years, there has been an eight-fold increase in enterprise investment in AI. And it’s predicted that, in another two years, 80% of knowledge workers will be assisted in their daily routines by AI-powered solutions.
It’s a journey, of course, and no two businesses are at the same stage at the same time.
Here, Dan Payne, Chief Technical Officer at leading digital workplace management experts VOSS Solutions, shares valuable insight on how to accelerate digital maturity, enhance AI-readiness, and reap the rewards on offer…
Infrastructure
The AI dividend will be a significant one for those enterprises who deploy it in ways that add value to their unified communication tools and derive tangible benefits – but none of that is possible without the right infrastructure. It’s going to be a challenge for organisations that rely on legacy on-premises PBX solutions, for example. AI will place added load and complexity on any system, so think about modernising. Plus, leveraging AI to the full is likely to mean deploying multiple tools, not just one – think Microsoft Copilot, but also ChatGPT or other alternatives. It’s also not just about the AI tools of the present. AI-powered tools and capabilities will continue to evolve rapidly, so future-proofing infrastructure is crucial. Is it time to migrate to the cloud or do larger enterprises train their own AI models and run them themselves? Or is a hybrid approach best?
Data
AI depends upon high quality, well organised data for many of its use cases. In the case of ChatGPT, it’s possible for a simple conversation to derive useful output. However, truly transformational tools such as custom chatbots or agent assistants need to be able to identify, retrieve, and contextualise data from across your entire ecosystem. You cannot just throw PDFs at it and assume that it is going to magically know what’s in them. Take an iterative approach to getting data into an optimal format that enables the fastest and most efficient retrieval-augmented-generation (RAG) process. For example, an AI-powered assistant will go and search that database, but it assumes that the data has been ingested and indexed in the correct way. The old adage still applies – rubbish in, rubbish out.
People
For an organisation to really benefit from the deployment of AI, it has to have everyone on board. Everyone must, at some level, have an understanding of what it is and what it is capable of. It’s not helpful, for example, for only an organisation’s leadership or IT team to have bought into it and for it to be imposed on others. Start identifying within each department or team what use cases make sense and how AI can make a positive impact. Then begin a constant conversation across the organisation in which the concepts, the day-to-day impacts, and the real-world benefits become a language that everyone is at ease with. Ultimately, the success of organisations’ deployment of AI will be directly linked to the culture that exists within them. It’s about educating and upskilling the workforce; and it’s about transparency and trust. Adoption is key, of course. So, strong, supportive, and inclusive leadership is a must.
Strategic alignment
Partnering with AI experts in the field of unified communications will provide a robust foundation on which to build-out a cutting-edge stack that comprises the right modern toolset. Those expert vendors can provide access to those tools, but can also help organisations to deploy them smoothly, effectively, and cost-efficiently. Put together an AI council within the organisation – a group of people drawn from multiple departments, teams, and levels that are excited about AI and who can tour the business and champion its capabilities. Task it with identifying specific challenges and how best AI can be used to solve them. Then start some pilot projects, such as rolling out an AI-enabled internal chat service, for example. Start small and prove value quickly; and then, as confidence and momentum build, start to put together a more robust AI road map.
In summary
The speed and scale of enterprise AI adoption is likely to be a mixed bag. Some smaller businesses will be more ready and quicker to act than larger enterprises for which major change can be challenging. However, the bottom line is that AI is now everywhere, and capabilities are being embedded into every piece of new software. Exposing more and more people to it will educate them on its benefits. Complex things will be done in a fraction of the normal time; workforces will no longer be negatively impacted by tedious manual tasks; the employee communication and collaboration experience will be greatly enhanced. There’s a saying I like: ‘AI won’t put you out of business, but businesses using AI will. VOSS Solutions is well-positioned to support organisations in their journey toward integrating and adopting advanced technologies like AI into their unified communications environment.
To learn more about how VOSS Solutions can help your and your customers’ businesses get AI-ready, visit the website.
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