Who should implement AI in a company and what competencies are needed for this

Many processes in the company can be automated and accelerated thanks to technology. Business needs a leader and a strong team to carry out digital transformation

What competencies should a digital leader have?

There is a stereotype that digital transformation affects only the information technology department. In fact, all employees of companies, and even those whose work is not directly related to IT, should participate in this process.

For a digital transformation to be successful, the person under whom it takes place must possess four qualities: be a visionary, tech savvy, have a high level of respect within the company, and the ability to move forward confidently in an environment of uncertainty.

Digital Transformation Team

The concentration of all powers for digital solutions in the company in the hands of one employee is a risk for the company. For a successful launch and implementation of digital transformation, it is necessary that the entire team of top managers and heads of structural divisions participate in the process.

Structurally, the company should have a digital leader (CDO), for whom digital transformation is the main task, and a working group of managers should be formed. There are three key roles that can help AI transformation and adoption:

• Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)

Any project should begin with an understanding of how a new product or service can be useful to customers. The main thing that marketing understands is precisely the problems and needs of customers. Without marketing, it is almost impossible to move on to the next round of product development. In addition, today marketing is becoming more technological, and marketing teams have more technical competencies.

Marketing actively uses data for personalized communication. However, they have not yet learned how to really use artificial intelligence in marketing. For example, there is a task to choose the most successful version of the ad in a short time, spending the minimum budget on it. Using Reinforcement Learning, you can improve your marketing campaign setup by two to four times more effectively by dynamically adjusting impressions based on response and statistics already collected.

• Chief Financial Officer (CFO)

Financial leaders are very good at calculating the profitability and marginality of projects, they know how and in what it is better to invest, and they also understand the concept of a project portfolio for risk management. Since the CFO is constantly involved in analyzing financial data, he has a basic culture of working with data in general, and therefore, he can naturally expand his competencies to other types of data and tasks that arise when using AI.

A successful CFO is always a disciplined professional, so he will help develop the digital transformation of the company in a systematic way, and not turn it into a startup fair. He will be able to build a portfolio of projects balanced in terms of risk and profitability.

• Chief Information Officer (CIO)

The head of the IT team is the owner of special technical knowledge about the entire cycle of creating and supporting IT products, who understands what skills and specialists are needed to implement specific solutions. It is the CIO team that will ultimately implement artificial intelligence with their own hands. It is important to understand that digital transformation covers a much larger layer of solutions and approaches than traditional IT tasks, and is not limited to updating the software and digital products used. This is a revolutionary restructuring of the company’s way of life, so the functionality of a digital leader is more voluminous than the tasks that the IT team solves, which also requires the development of new digital competencies.

Digital transformation is a fundamentally new direction in the company. A new direction is new knowledge and skills that can either be developed within the company or acquired from outside. Being the leader of this process and being responsible for the result is a task that requires both the entire set of the usual competencies of a leader, as well as flexibility, perseverance and the ability to quickly find the right arguments in the face of the uncertainty of the result itself and changing technological givens.

Invite or grow: how companies find the right employee

Depending on the corporate structure and culture, the Digital Transformation Leader can hold different positions, but most often this position is called the Chief Digital Officer (CDO). Companies can either grow their own digital leaders or hire external experts to strengthen the team.

In the first case, the person already understands the business from the inside, understands the company’s current products, and also has the reputation to promote complex initiatives. Such a person needs, first of all, to carry out an internal “reset”, expand his competence in the field of new technologies and lead a team formed to solve problems. But it is difficult to grow such a specialist. Being in a constant “OS”, even strong managers often think only about how to make the business successful today, not having time to think about the future.

When a leader comes from outside, as a rule, this specialist already has the necessary skills, has a good eye, and understands technical aspects. But such an invited employee needs time to understand the company’s business and all key processes, as well as earn respect in the new team. This process usually takes 3 to 6 months. For example, industrial organizations need to know what temperature should be in the shop, how many people can be on the platform at the same time, what links the supply chain consists of, who are the main customers and why. If the new leader starts transforming processes right away, there is a big risk that he will not take into account important details and, as a result, will make the wrong decision.

Sometimes companies solve the problem of finding a digital leader through the purchase of small specialized companies or startups. With such an absorption, a synergy effect occurs and the combined structure has advantages:

• the company gets a digital leader and team;
• there is a transfer of new unique knowledge and processes between a startup and a company;
• the business model of a startup is strengthened through access to the data and customers of the “parent” company.

This is an effective way to kick-start your digital transformation. Successful companies in which change is already underway are adopting this approach more actively than old-fashioned companies. For example, Facebook bought Instagram, Google bought YouTube, the successful Google Cloud service for building chatbots, Yandex bought TheQuestion to strengthen the knowledge base of its voice assistant Alice.

Another way to find a digital leader is to hire an external consulting partner to work with the company and help lead the digital transformation. Working with different companies, a consultant has access to a large number of cases, there is an understanding of what needs to be done, and what innovations will become very expensive and time-consuming for the organization. According to experience, launching a transformation with a partner takes from 14 to 21 months, takes place in several phases and ends with the creation of an artificial intelligence center of excellence. This center itself will continue to launch new digital products and effectively implement AI with the company’s internal resources.

How to prepare employees for digital transformation

To prepare the company and employees for digital transformation, you need to go through several stages.

Stage 1. Prepare the head of the company for the implementation of artificial intelligence. A person who does not understand at least a basic understanding of the company’s digital changes will not be able to develop the direction in a long-term and high-quality way. And the manager must constantly develop his skills, fill in the gaps and increase competence through education.

However, learning for the sake of learning is a losing strategy. The leader and manager must have a constant, conscious understanding of how and why they apply and adapt their new knowledge to the company.

Stage 2. Hold regular thematic meetings and mini-conferences on the topic. Employees of all departments must understand that the company is changing. They need to know how and what processes will be affected by their work. For example, a worker who tightens a screw in a factory needs to know that pressing a certain button will help other departments use the data for analytics.

Meetings help tell employees the theoretical and practical aspects of innovations, and for employees they become a platform for exchanging experience – successes and implementation problems. Such social activities will involve the largest number of employees and carry out information and explanatory work for them on the innovations taking place in the company. In addition, in this way a community of people interested in a new direction is formed.

Stage 3. Choose a path for developing the transformation – attracting external consultants or working with an internal team. If you look globally, then most of the processes will resemble the implementation of any new project: you need to work out an implementation plan, assess risks, draw up a portfolio of products or projects on which artificial intelligence will be tested, and make a prototype. And, as with any project, a company can choose to hire a contractor or work on its own.

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