Where is my ROI for GenAI

With the buzz around GenAI, it is hard not to be skeptical when you have been working in the technology industry for many years (I am not that old either!!!). Afterall, the IT industry has hyped up every major technology innovation often without really knowing where the tangible value was at the time. Most transformations weren’t as easy as we thought they were going to be. Take cloud for example; the expectation was set that utility services could be turned on easily without need for domain expertise, yet there is more need than ever for knowledge and expertise to extract the value from cloud services and make it useful for customers.

It is obvious that GenAI is a significant IT transformation. However, it is already proving difficult for enterprises to leverage. Yes, there are some great use cases, but for most companies, the state of their current data estate presents security, governance and compliance challenges if exposed to a GenAI engines. It is going to be a tough nut to crack to deliver on the promise at scale and is still going to require expert oversight to get ongoing value from.

So, how do you get value from GenAI now? Based on recent experience, here are some guiding points on how to get momentum with your initiative:

1. Accept that AI is significant enough a transformation to warrant exploring use cases as a “solution looking for a problem”.
2. Map current toolsets that have AI capabilities to business capabilities.
3. Break it down - what AI capabilities are self-contained, what are enterprise-wide, what are generally no go’s for your organisation.
4. Trail self-contained use cases – it irons out the policy and your prioritisation framework.
5. Align to initiatives to the strategy – some businesses will be quickly disrupted as GenAI can differentiate more personalised UX, some businesses will gently realise back-office efficiency gains.
6. Get the GenAI policy nailed – this should guide the organisation on appropriate usage and set the guardrails for pre-implementation assessment.
7. Educate at multiple levels – from board/exec level to employee level. Replace the noise with a clear policy and demonstrated initiatives.

Hopefully this helps you on your AI journey and good luck!!!