How To Identify The Best AI Opportunities For Your Business – In 2 Simple Steps

How To Identify
The Best AI Opportunities
For Your Business
- In 2 Simple Steps

© 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
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IntroductionIntroduction
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the biggest and most transformative technology trend of our
time. Every business, big or small, will have to consider the impact of AI on their
organization. Here we look at how you do this in practice.
No organization can afford to sit back and ignore the potential of AI. Yet, rushing to
adopt AI just because the technology exists can be just as damaging to a business. To
fully realize the potential of AI – indeed, any new technology – you need to approach it
with a clear business goal or need in mind. In other words, you need to identify and
narrow down to the most valuable AI opportunities for your business (which means your
approach could be quite different from that of your competitors).
How To Identify The Best AI Opportunities For
Your Business – In 2 Simple Steps

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IntroductionIntroduction
When I work with organizations to develop their AI strategy, we break the process down
into two fundamental steps:
1. First, you need to identify the potential applications (use cases) of AI in your
business.
2. Then you can begin to whittle those potential use cases down to just a few top
priorities.
Let’s explore each step in a little more detail.
How To Identify The Best AI Opportunities For
Your Business – In 2 Simple Steps

Step 1. Identifying your AI use cases
Linking your AI strategy to your business strategy is the best way to ensure AI delivers
maximum value for the business. Therefore, this first step involves looking at what your
business is trying to achieve, and what unique challenges your business is facing, and then
identifying potential solutions through AI. What you’ll end up with is a list of potential AI
projects or use cases. An AI consultant can help you with this process.
Don’t limit yourself to a small number of use cases at this stage, as you’ll be narrowing
down your options in the second step. For now, your goal is to explore the many ways in
which AI could help your organization achieve its key strategic goals. This might include:

 Making your products more intelligent
 Developing more intelligent services
 Building a deeper understanding of customers
 Making business processes more intelligent
 Automating core business functions
 Automating time-consuming, repetitive or mundane tasks
Having pinpointed some potential uses in your business, you can now begin to flesh them
out in more detail. Consider the following factors for each potential use case (this ensures
you’re approaching each use in the same structured, thorough way):

1. Link to strategic goal. Because it’s so easy to get caught up in all the incredible
things AI can do, it’s vital you can link each use case to a strategic business goal. If a
potential use of AI doesn’t link to your overarching business strategy, I’d question
whether it’s really worth the expense and disruption. So ask yourself, “How would this
use of AI help the business achieve its objectives, grow and prosper?”
2. AI objective. Here, you can define your AI-related goal in more detail. What,
specifically, are you hoping to achieve through this use of AI? For example, you may
be looking to solve a particular business-critical problem, reduce employee turnover,
improve health and safety, etc.
3. Measures of success (KPIs). This section answers the question, “What does success
look like for this AI project, and how will we measure success?” Therefore, identify
which business metrics/KPIs you could use to track progress against your AI objective.

6. Use case owner. Who in the business would be responsible for this AI use case and
assume overall ownership of the project?
4. AI approach and data required. Which AI approach (for example, machine learning,
deep learning, computer vision) is required to achieve your AI objective, and what sort
of data do you need? Again, you may need to enlist the help of a data/AI consultant
throughout this process, if you don’t have AI capabilities in house.
6. Ethical and legal issues. Here, you’ll need to consider the potential legal implications
of your AI use case (including consent and data privacy), as well as the ethical
implications.
7. Technology and infrastructure. It's very likely each use case will require some
technology and infrastructure changes. Here, you consider what systems, software,
and hardware you might need to achieve your AI objective.

8. Skills and capacity. Here, consider the skills gaps that might prevent you from
achieving your AI objective – and how you will close those gaps. This may involve
training staff, hiring new talent or partnering with external providers.
9. Implementation. This is where you set out the potential implementation challenges
and roadblocks that you’ll need to overcome if your AI objective is to become reality.
10. Change management. This is normally lumped in with implementation, but I tend to
separate it out to emphasize how vital it is to manage AI-related changes carefully –
after all, AI may lead to big changes in how your business operates. For example, if
you’re automating or streamlining processes, this may impact the work of your
employees, so how will you manage this while promoting a positive AI culture?

I like to use a formal template to help capture all these details, but you can do this
however you like. Having evaluated each use case in detail, you’re now ready to narrow
down your options. Which brings me to…

Step 2. Working out your AI priorities
You may have identified as many as 10 or 15 use cases in the previous phase, but trying to
embark on too many AI projects at once can spell disaster. That’s why you now need to
rank your use cases in order of their strategic importance to the business.
Your goal here is to arrive at:
 Your top one, two or three key strategic use cases. These are your absolute top AI
priorities for now – the AI use cases that represent the biggest opportunities for your
business, or will help solve your biggest business challenges. If you’re a smaller
business, you may only want to focus on one key AI priority at a time. For a bigger
business, two or three should be doable. But don’t be tempted to prioritize more than
three.
 One or two AI “quick wins”. From your use cases, it often helps to identify one or
two short-term, smaller AI projects that are relatively quick, easy, and inexpensive to
implement. Identifying these quick wins will help you demonstrate the value of AI, win
people over, and sow the seeds for your bigger AI projects.

Step 2. Working out your AI priorities
As for those use cases that don't make the cut for now, don't discard them completely. As
you achieve one AI project, you may find you have capacity to move onto another use
case – or it may be that your overall strategic priorities shift, which means AI use cases
that were identified some time ago are no longer relevant. I, therefore, recommend you
repeat this process of identifying and prioritizing AI use cases at least once a year, or every
time you review your overarching business strategy.
AI is going to impact businesses of all shapes and sizes, across all industries. Discover how
to prepare your organization for an AI-driven world in my new book, The Intelligence
Revolution: Transforming Your Business With AI.

Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website
© 2020 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved© 2017 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website

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How To Identify The Best AI Opportunities For Your Business – In 2 Simple Steps

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