Worldwide executives have already realized artificial intelligence’s power of change and are applying it to make better-informed decisions, deliver an increased experience to their users and make their corporations a real agent of disruption. However, in this sea of new knowledge, understanding and defining how to conduct projects that transform your company into a cognitive organization it is not always something clear. In our first post, we will talk about some tips for those who are thinking of walking this path.
Define a roadmap
As you might think, cognitive computing can be applied in virtually every business process, which makes a tricky task to define where investments are to be made. Different authors will use different terminologies, but in general, we start looking an organization through three perspectives: 1) how it deals with customer experience, 2) their operational process and 3) their business model.
In the first one, the goal is change the way the final customer perceives your brand. Invest in adaptive and self-learning technologies to create personalized experiences and solve questions and problems faster.
In the second one, you want to improve highly repetitive processes or that require your team to spend a lot of time reading and comparing data. The goal here is to increase the capacity of your employees and free those from manual tasks so they can do work that generate more value.
The third is probably the most difficult because it involves applying A.I directly in the business model. A first step may be to invest in generating more qualified information. While traditional analytics manages to provide insights based on data, cognitive manages to provide recommendations. The high point is when you begin to incorporate this intelligence directly into the final product (for example an HR company that uses A.I to select candidates based on personality).
Think like a designer
Design thinking techniques and principles will help you solve problems in a creative and practical way, always keeping the user in the spotlight. Currently DT's core business framework revolves around "empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test". Regardless of following this approach, three pillars are critical and will become important drivers:
1) Empathy: try to understand what your customers and users are thinking, doing and talking. Putting people at the center of your initiatives will lead you to better decisions and to solutions that can truly improve the lives of your users.
2) Collaboration: in initiatives of this nature, it is very common that the main interest comes from line of business. Involving people with different background is especially important when thinking about new ideas. You need this heterogeneity to diverge enough at the right time and then converge on truly innovative ideas.
3) Prototyping: adaptive technologies improve as they are used and feedback received. Organize smaller and more frequent pilots to understand and improve project’s outcomes. It will also help you demonstrate the value of new capabilities with a small and controlled risk.
Deliver with DevOps
Whether it is a traditional system or a new cognitive application, to deliver quality and cost-effective software with reduced time-to-market you need a holistic approach that involves people, processes and tools. DevOps applies agile methodologies concepts throughout the development lifecycle to maximize software delivery. We have already talked about putting people at the center of their development. Talking about processes try to make short interactive cycles of up to 10 weeks. Besides that choose a platform that allows you to experiment with low effort and investment, but to scale effectively when your users are delighted by the new features. IBM Bluemix can help you at this, take a look.
Walking this path is challenging, but the potential benefits are worth the effort. Get together with your team, build your strategy and reinvent your business!