CDOs must democratize AI in a secure and scalable manner in order to be successful. For AI to be adopted, everyone has to have a say in the process. Effective AI promotes collaboration across business groups, IT and data science teams.

 

Businesspeople who use Excel, Tableau, Salesforce, and other enterprise applications must be empowered to build and leverage predictive models in those tools without needing to have formal data science skills. Unless AI is fully integrated into the business, it has little value. AI predictions and recommendations must flow seamlessly into business processes.

 

 

This deep collaboration results in augmented intelligence, in which human domain expertise combines with AI data insights. AI must empower humans to overlay adjustments in business assumptions on top of what the AI has learned, creating a powerful engine for informed decision making.

 

According to a survey of 1,500 firms in a range of industries by the Harvard Business Review, the biggest performance improvements come when humans and smart machines work together, enhancing each other’s strengths. The Harvard study concluded, “Companies must develop a solution through co-creation – having stakeholders envision how they might collaborate with AI systems to improve a process.”

Cross-Functional Teams 

Unfortunately, many companies still struggle to collaborate across functions. A 2020 McKinsey study found that only 23% of surveyed companies had cross functional teams that worked together on AI projects. Democratization is essential in order to put AI into the hands of the entire business team and make it an integral part of the organization.

 

With the emergence of AI platforms that automate the entire lifecycle of an AI project, businesses can quickly build, deploy, and manage AI applications to transform their operations. CDOs must lead the effort to involve multiple stakeholders in AI projects early and often in order to reap the full benefits of AI.