AI in Business – 8 Essential Steps

“Recklessly introducing an AI tool into your company to work smarter is like putting a V8 on your lawnmower to mow your garden faster.”

The unimaginable possibilities of AI tools inspire many entrepreneurs to think about how they can improve their operations. New and improved tools that can lighten or speed up processes in various areas hit the market daily. Visit stekz.ai for an impressive overview. Or even make entirely new things possible! But the starting point should always be the company’s goal, never the tool. In other words, don’t ask how you can integrate an AI tool into your company, but which AI tools your company needs!

Once you know what you want to automate with AI and have selected the right tool for it, it’s important to introduce the tool in a structured manner. Because the introduction will affect your operations. If you don’t, the tool will not be used, but in the worst case, your company will regress instead of progressing.

In other words, after the introduction of an AI tool, companies must adapt in various ways to maximize the benefits and effectively address any challenges. Here are some essential steps and considerations for companies to adapt:

1. Reassessment of Business Processes: Companies need to review their current processes to identify where AI can be most effective. This may mean that some processes need to be redesigned to facilitate the integration of AI. For example, suppose your company sends out a newsletter monthly. The Marketing department has set up a process, one step of which is selecting an image. By introducing an AI tool that can generate images, the manual selection can be skipped. At least, and here lies the crux, in a large part of the cases. Because a new step will have to be added to the process that checks the image. And steps will have to be added in case the generated image does not meet the requirements. But this also means that the amount of manual work decreases, and a different responsibility is added (checker). This all affects your operations.

2. Culture Change and Leadership: The success of AI implementation often depends on the company culture and leadership. An innovative culture open to change is crucial. Leaders must have a clear vision of how AI can transform the organization and communicate this vision to increase employee engagement. If the leadership does not do this, the chances of adoption are very low.

3. Design of Human-Machine Collaboration: Even for knowledge workers, work is increasingly becoming a collaboration between humans and machines. Therefore, companies must develop strategies for effective collaboration between employees and AI systems. This includes identifying tasks that are best performed by humans versus those where AI can be more efficient.

4. Training of Employees: Therefore, it is also essential to provide employees with the necessary training and tools to work with the new technologies. These could be training sessions on the basics of AI or specific training on how to integrate the new tools into their daily work.

5. Innovation and Continuous Improvement: The implementation of AI should be seen as a continuous process, not a one-time project. Companies must promote a culture of continuous improvement and innovation, regularly evaluating how AI tools can be optimized and updated.

6. Risk Management: It is important to also identify and address potential risks of AI implementation in advance, such as technical errors, security issues, or unintended consequences. Some risks cannot be easily remedied afterward. Therefore, a proactive approach to risk management is important.

7. Stakeholder Engagement: Involving all key stakeholders, including employees, customers, and suppliers, in the AI integration process can help identify opportunities and challenges and ensure broader support.

8. Data Governance and Ethics: Companies must ensure strong data governance frameworks to maintain the quality and integrity of the data used by AI systems. Additionally, it is important to establish ethical guidelines for the use of AI, including considerations regarding bias, privacy, and transparency.

By taking these eight steps into account before introducing AI into your company, you are most likely to succeed. And you also lay a strong foundation for future growth and innovation.

However, these steps are not always easy. Therefore, the experts at Stekz are ready to help at every step. And Stekz offers MyStekz, a platform that makes this approach logical and easy. Contact us or visit stekz.com for more information.