AI Readiness: How to assess whether your business is ready for the AI revolution

AI (Artificial Intelligence) presents an existential threat to many Australian businesses. 

It is transforming how companies provide customer service, streamline operations, increase productivity and generate insights to make better decisions.

“69% of Australian leaders have incorporated AI into their business strategy and the global spend on AI is expected to reach $110 billion by 2024”*

However, as AI continues to expand, is your business ready to take on AI? 

This blog provides guidelines to help Australian businesses assess their readiness for AI adoption.

Assess your data 

Data is the fuel that powers AI. Poorly managed data can lead to inaccurate AI models which can have serious implications on your AI solution. So, it is essential to assess whether your company data is: 

• Accessible: And not isolated or in formats that can’t easily be leveraged online
• Complete: Consistent, and complete without missing values
• Clean: Not all data may be useful for training AI. Only relevant data should be leveraged to ensure behavior isn’t skewed

If your data does not meet the above requirements, your business may not be ready for AI implementation. To combat this, invest in data analysis or machine learning services to address data quality issues (48% of companies do!). 

If you need help priming your data for AI implementation, check out our Machine learning services.

Evaluate your team’s AI awareness and skills

According to Garner, the number one challenge of AI adoption is lack of staff skills and poor data (56%), and the second biggest challenge is fear of the unknown (42%).

AI awareness

It is important that your stakeholders and executives have a deep understanding of AI benefits and uses, and are able to drive that understanding throughout the company.

In order for AI to be welcomed, it should be positioned as a tool to improve productivity & create new job opportunities for employees vs a tool used to replace them. 

“For change to happen, people need to be on board. Education is important to let your employees know AI is not here to replace them –  but rather to support them, enhance productivity and assist in their work.” – Ivan Engelbrecht, Head of Innovation at 4mation.

AI skills

Once you’ve identified where AI fits into your business, evaluate your existing technology and talent. 

If you don’t have the expertise to develop and execute AI solutions, you will need to hire, up skill your existing employees or engage an agency to support your AI needs.

Ensure your AI solutions align with main business objectives

AI has the potential to improve various aspects of your business. From automating repetitive tasks to generating insights from large data sets. By understanding the capabilities of AI, you can identify potential implementations that align with your business goals. 

For example, AI chatbots are a popular use case as they provide significant value to businesses looking to improve customer service and reduce workload on staff. 

Identify what your goals are for AI implementation, then align AI solutions to achieve those goals.

Is your business AI ready?

Once you’ve met the above requirements, your business is ready to take on AI. However, if you’re not quite there yet, don’t worry – we’ve got you covered.

Our AI readiness service gets you ahead of the game with a plan to leverage your data, understand the opportunities, and threats faced by your business and the changes you can make to thrive as AI expands. Put simply – we help you build a competitive advantage with AI.

Once you’ve approved your AI roadmap, you have the option to implement it using our local team or your internal team. 

Learn more about our AI readiness and Machine learning services today.

*DataAgility