How Can Companies Overcome Challenges That Come With AI Adoption?

A survey suggests that 58% organisations have embedded at least 1 AI capability in their processes or their product. With the graph leaning more heavily towards AI adoption, we can agree that it is the inevitable future and why shouldn’t it be? AI processes have helped the workforce tremendously in terms of efficiency and quicker updates. AI that has been launched in product or service segments have also seen a welcoming response across industries. 

Even during this pandemic, AI capabilities have shown wonders in the healthcare, fintech and communication segments. AI technology has been particularly helpful in gathering data about hotspots and identifying what areas the authorities need to work on. Adding to this, robots have found fame in hospitals for sanitising the premises and serving food to infected persons. 

While the adoption of AI into business processes and products may have become mainstream, there are still a lot of companies that struggle with adapting to it.

AI Adoption: Challenges And How To Overcome Them

Inefficient strategy and lack of clarity

One thing that companies need to realise is that AI is an integral part of their business. There cannot be a business strategy that doesn’t account for it. Since AI capabilities are embedded products in your existing technology, you need to build your strategy around it. Choose the areas of your business that need AI the most and invest in those areas. 

Core processes such as Customer Relationship management also involve the use of AI and would reap you big benefits. Chatbots and virtual assistants would be useful for almost any organisation that is looking to give their customers a real-life experience digitally. Your strategy would fall flat if you include AI in just one aspect of its being. 

Lack of clarity arises in two situations- when there isn’t enough knowledge about AI or when you haven’t trained your employees well. After decades of research and experimentation, we are finally at a stage where AI algorithms are working well. You must train your employees to understand AI and work alongside it. 

Employee resistance and ethical factors

When you introduce change, there is always resistance. It is just how the human psyche works. The comfort with familiarity, no matter how bad, is easier than change. To make your employees more comfortable, you need to first resolve their misunderstandings about AI technology. They might have concerns over their own jobs becoming redundant due to AI or misconception about its complexity in usage. You need to address these and help them adapt to new technology. 

While AI applications have come a long way with successful algorithms, there will arise ethical concerns. These concerns are quite big and can be affecting your decision to introduce AI into your business. Sometimes, you might not be using it to its full potential due to ethical concerns which would be almost like not using it all. 

However, a lot of companies that are giving AI as a service are rolling out new policies which are in accordance with ethical AI expectations. As a business, you can also ensure that you feed it with the right data so it does not learn biases. Be sure to introduce an independent set of policies and guidelines for using AI technology. 

Summing Up: AI is your competitive advantage

Companies are already leveraging AI in various aspects of their business which is making them understand consumers better. To be a part of the competition, an organisation will have to eventually adapt AI or there will be no competition at all. Once they are using the same level of technology, how you choose to personalise your AI models will define your customer success.