The North Star to enterprise AI success

Lim Wee Tee
5-min read

What must organisations do to ensure AI serves as a tool for lasting impact, not just novelty?

In today’s competitive landscape, business success hinges on implementing a deliberate strategy. From product development to market expansion, every decision needs a well-defined roadmap to success because even the most ingenious concepts can fizzle out and gather dust without a clear purpose and goals understood at every level across the business. This principle becomes even more crucial when businesses grapple with the complexities of rapidly developing technologies like Generative AI (Gen AI).

According to a 2024 survey by McKinsey on AI, the number of organisations using Gen AI regularly has nearly doubled since the previous survey in 2023. Yet, IDC’s AI Mature in Asia/Pacific Report discovered that one of the top five key reasons for AI projects failing is attributed to unclear goals when implementing AI. This imperative becomes more prevalent with Deloitte’s Generative AI in Asia Pacific Study highlighting higher levels of Gen AI adoption in the region, indicating a growing need to address disruption to the usage of traditional technologies across markets like Singapore, Taiwan and the broader Southeast Asia region.

While it is clear that companies are aware of how Gen AI presents a unique opportunity to drive innovation and productivity at scale, acting with intent is key to unlocking true value for businesses.

Align business goals and AI strategy

Although the potential of Gen AI tools is no longer in question, simply deploying this technology doesn't guarantee success. Implementation can be fraught with challenges if enterprises lack clear goals, expectations, and purpose.

This lack of alignment between a company’s overall AI strategy and core business objectives could potentially lead to wasted resources and missed opportunities. According to an Accenture report, three-quarters of organisations do not have comprehensive strategies in place that will lead to positive worker outcomes and experiences.

Business leaders must therefore take bolder and concrete steps to accelerate the adoption of enterprise AI to stay ahead of the game. The solution is clear: being intentional will ensure a path towards achieving a positive return on investment.

The first step is establishing a clear data strategy to treat data as a strategic asset. By aligning its use with business priorities, companies will be able to harness the power of Gen AI to streamline workflows and garner business critical insights.

Next, cultivating a learning culture that starts from the top is key. Leaders should clearly communicate their organisation’s AI strategy and goals to pave the way for the workforce to trust and work alongside this evolving technology.

Lastly, equipping the workforce with essential resources, skills, and knowledge through training programs will ensure employees have the capabilities and expertise to keep pace with the constantly changing applications of AI.

Backing your AI strategy with modern infrastructure

The decentralised nature of legacy infrastructure means useful data often gets trapped in outdated and siloed systems. This tends to breed the issue of data sprawl, creating a bottleneck of scattered and unstructured data that impedes the extraction of actionable insights for AI models.

Since AI systems thrive on high-quality, diverse data to succeed, organizations with access to these resources can better capitalise on AI to streamline operations, maximize the return on IT investments, and unlock new business opportunities. On the other hand, companies that do not modernize their stack risk being left behind.

Breaking free from such legacy systems requires businesses to invest in a scalable, secure, and resilient data architecture to support increasing data workloads generated from AI models. By leveraging real-time data processing, storage, and integration, organizations can unlock the full potential of AI to automate certain tasks and optimise budgets.

One such organization utilising Gen AI is Bank Negara Indonesia, which aims to enhance regional and commercial banking office productivity as well as the bolstering of its credit mechanism and transaction banking platform for a more personalised customer experience. Its latest deployment will enable the bank to rapidly scale up Gen AI operations to meet the diverse needs of a global customer base and deliver greater value to its stakeholders.

Furthermore, modern data platforms encourage a data-driven culture, meaning that insights gleaned from AI models can inform product development, marketing strategies, and customer service. At the same time, giving employees access to all of their organization’s data, regardless of where it resides, allows them to run analytics anywhere while maintaining consistent data security and governance across all environments. Supported by the capabilities of a true hybrid platform, all of the company’s data is AI-ready, accelerating data-backed decisions, leading to a competitive advantage in their respective industries.

One such company taking these steps to augment their customer experience is OCBC Indonesia -- they believe that technology and customer experience are inseparable in anticipating consumer needs and delivering personalized recommendations. This customer-centricity has pushed it to innovate and implement a hybrid data strategy that would integrate seamlessly with its data lake. Implementing such modern data technology paves the way for the bank to launch GenAI projects to remain at the forefront of the banking industry.

As data volumes and sources will only continue to grow, it is increasingly necessary for companies to implement a robust data platform tailored to meet the evolving needs of their business and AI models.

Effectively using AI starts with secure data you can trust

Since AI systems hinge on having large volumes of data, the real challenge is ensuring that data is trustworthy. This should form the foundation of any organisation looking to deploy an AI solution.

A secure and agile platform that allows business ideas to extract valuable insights reliably and seamlessly at scale will fuel faster decision-making and enable more proactive data-driven strategies. By laying the groundwork for AI initiatives, companies are one step closer to navigating the evolving landscape of a data-driven future with consistent and fair insights, ultimately driving business success with confidence and clarity.

Creating lasting impact from AI

Responsible and strategic implementation of Gen AI by prioritising clear objectives, fostering transparency with employees, and building a robust data foundation is precisely why acting with intent is pivotal. This is an ongoing journey that requires collaboration between leaders, technical teams, and employees to navigate the ethical considerations and ensure AI serves as a tool for lasting impact, not just novelty.

Lim Wee Tee is the regional VP for ASEAN and Taiwan at Cloudera

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