The State of AI and learning from Transformers

The manufacturing industry is undergoing a radical transformation and AI is a driving force behind much of this change. AI is an exciting technology with enormous potential and companies that are adopting are seeing revenue and margin gains over those that don’t.

Deloitte recently released their State of AI in the Enterprise, 4th edition and I’ve gathered some of the most important and interesting findings. The central focus of the report is largely on becoming an ‘AI-fueled organisation. The research surveyed 2,875 executives from 11 top economies who have purview into AI strategies and investments within their organisations. They were asked about their overarching AI strategy, leadership, technology and data approaches, and how they’re helping their workforce operationalise AI applications within the companies and the outcomes of those who had deployed full scale projects.

Who’s leading AI?

The survey looked at how companies are deploying AI and categorised them into four main profiles:

• ‘Starters’ (29%) are lagging behind and have either not yet implemented AI or are demonstrating very few leading practice behaviours.
• ‘Transformers’ (28%) are organisations that have adopted at scale successfully and are well on their way to AI success.
• ‘Pathseekers’ (26%) have adopted the right principles and behaviours behind successful AI implementation but not at scale.
• ‘Underachievers’ (17%) have a high rate of deployment but haven’t adopted enough leading practices to help them effectively achieve more meaningful outcomes.

Transformers lead the way

Transformers are three times more likely to have an enterprise-wide AI strategy in place compared to the rest of the respondents. This category is adopting practices conducive to AI success and they were found to be more successful in the following areas.

1. Putting strategy first by linking AI plans to the company’s strategic north star and navigating AI investments by it.
2. Automating and innovating to reimagine the way they do business and not focusing purely on efficiency gains.
3. Sharing vision motivated by big results, which also served to increase public awareness and attract talent and investment.
4. Constant iteration and developing dynamic ways to assess and adjust strategy so that it evolves with the market.

AI-Readiness and culture

‘AI-fueled organisations nurture a trusting, agile, data-fluent culture and invest in change management to support new ways of working.’ The report made three key recommendations:

1. Trust overcomes fear - Put trust in the workforce if you want success with AI. Bold AI strategies can create fear, a major barrier to successful implementation.
2. Data fluency drives creative insights - Data literacy not only drives creative insight but helps build trust in AI.
3. Agility helps you fail fast - Agile organisations pivot quicker after failure and are able to quickly turn insights into action.

One concerning finding reported that only 37% of those surveyed are significantly investing in change management, incentives, or training activities to help staff integrate new technology into their work.

Leaders build ecosystems

Finally, building ecosystems played an important role for ‘AI-fueled’ organisations. These high-achieving organisations had diverse ecosystem strategies and worked with multiple partners. The report shares two recommendations for building dynamic ecosystems including:

1. Choose partners with diverse perspectives as they are significantly more likely to have a transformative vision for AI, enterprise-wide AI strategies, and use AI as a strategic differentiator.
2. Keep things complicated as a low number of external partnerships can create difficulties in the future if it is necessary to part ways with a vendor.

Understanding how other organisations are successfully implementing AI and the best practices for doing so is crucial if you want a positive outcome. It can’t be stressed enough that to get the most out of AI it’s also important that you understand the technology itself. Lack of skills, knowledge and fear are major barriers to AI success. This starts from the top. If your management team is lacking in knowledge or understanding, we recommend they take the Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentalscourse. Talk to us to learn more about the value that adopting some of these AI-powered tools can have for your business.

If you’re interested in learning more, the links to the full report and related web page can be found in the further reading section.

Further reading

• State of AI in the Enterprise, 4th Edition (Full report)
• Becoming an AI-fueled organization | Deloitte Insights