What to Expect from an AI Consultant
An AI consultant can spend his or her career designing, implementing, and improving artificial intelligence solutions that drive company performance and financial results.
But what exactly do they do? Or what should they do to drive the maximum impact in the least time?
To answer these questions, we gathered lessons from several Johnny Grow AI consultants.
They provided clear evidence that the biggest results are created from a short list of actions.
So, before you consider hiring your next consultant, consider the below recommended actions from a group of seasoned experts.
01. Start with the Right Objectives
A good AI consultant will advise early that the goal of artificial intelligence is not to get software to correctly operate. Technology is not a business outcome. It's a task on the way to an outcome. The clear goal is to achieve measurable business results.
That's likely to include things like improving staff productivity, customer satisfaction and revenue growth. If your advisor isn't helping you apply technology to achieve these types of results, you are likely locked in a technology project that will underwhelm.
Simply installing new technology isn't going to improve your business outcomes any more than putting a new engine in your car will make you a better driver.
02. Apply Purpose Built Technology
Artificial intelligence is not a single technology. It's a suite of apps where each has a unique purpose.
For example, the three dominant types of AI are shown below.
You will realize the biggest successes when you align your objectives with these purpose-built technologies.
03. Develop Use Cases
When planning an AI deployment, don't start with the technology. Start with the most important business outcomes and then work backwards using technology to achieve them.
The business outcomes should be documented in use cases or user stories. Each must have a measurable goal, constituent and success criteria. Most use cases are industry specific. An example for the professional services industry is shown below.
Categorize use cases by investment, time to value, complexity and payback. This will then allow for easy prioritization and scheduling.
If your technology deployment is part of a business transformation program, focus on use cases that most directly impact customer interactions. That means use cases that engage customers. It also means use cases that impact how work gets done by the staff that sell, deliver and support your customers. If you cover these two bases, your upstream business objectives will be realized.
This bottom to top approach will also reduce change management obstacles and enable scale.
04. Adopt Best Practices
Experienced advisors bring AI best practices to reduce risk, increase focus, save time, and show the most direct route to targeted results.
For example, poor data quality will sabotage your effort before you even begin.
A data strategy, data quality standards and data management practices will prevent that.
A data strategy identifies what data should be captured and how it will be used. Data quality ensures accurate data serves its intended purpose. Data management analyzes, validates, categorizes, cleans, dedupes, appends, and archives data.
Most dirty data comes from human error. Most human error stems from missing data quality standards. To prevent both of these issues, create a data policy to define how data should be entered and standardized. Then create system validation checks with automation to enforce your data policy rules.
A 10% improvement in data quality is generally more powerful than a 100% improvement in an AI algorithm.
05. Create an AI Tech Stack
An AI Tech Stack is a managed portfolio of technologies that align software with business outcomes, create operational synergies, reduce complexity and future-proof technology investments.
It generally replaces piecemeal and departmental applications with an integrated platform to better deliver enterprise-wide automation, information and scale.
It's not practical to purchase every technology you need at once. So, your tech stack acts as a multi-year roadmap to procure technology in a sequence and pursuant to a plan.
Technologies are adopted in an order where each one builds upon the prior. It's a strategy that results in less maintenance, lower total cost of ownership (TCO), higher utilization, and much higher ROI.
06. Adopt an Implementation Methodology
An AI consultant should bring a mature and repeatable implementation methodology.
There's more than one way to implement AI. But the below diagram and sequence illustrate the five essential steps to reduce risk and ensure an on-time, on-budget and on-quality deployment.
This roadmap has been developed and iterated over many deployments. It goes beyond five sequential steps and includes programs for agile execution, risk management, change management and governance.
For example, risk management is needed because AI comes with some unique risk factors. Things like data privacy, data toxicity, bias, hallucinations, ethical guidelines, and acceptable use policies. There are also data protection laws such as GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act. A risk management plan is needed to avoid problems and ensure systems are transparent, explainable, and accountable.
Change management is needed because AI brings new processes, automation, information, responsibilities and control. It may also bring an actual or perceived loss of control. That's a lot of change. And the problem with change is that it causes anxiety for many staff.
Fortunately, a change management program can apply communication and collaboration to lower that anxiety. Even better, it can systemically shift individuals, teams, and the company from a current state to a defined future state. And do it while mitigating productivity loss during the transition, creating an environment for sustained change, and realizing the benefits of change more quickly. It will also ensure resistance to change will not delay or derail your objectives.
A Seasoned Advisor Can Help
When chartering new waters, it's invaluable to have a captain who has navigated those waters before. An experienced partner can guide the voyage with skills and processes to reach your destination in the least time, cost and risk.
Consider Johnny Grow if you are looking for an experienced partner to help plan, design, implement, or advance an artificial intelligence solution.
We are a certified and experienced AI consulting partner. We bring seasoned executives, best practices, business insights and technology accelerators to reduce time to value and improve your outcomes.