CIOs are key for any effective AI initiative
CIOs have had an uphill battle following the pandemic, but their newest challenge also poses their greatest business opportunity: AI. Jon Bance, chief operating officer at Leading Resolutions, explains how companies do not just require insight into opportunities at a global level, but also specific to their current organisational goals and needs, if they are to make the most of the technology.
Advancements in AI are galvanising change and competition in the market. How companies navigate this in 2025 and beyond is critical to success.
The possibilities of AI are exciting, but not always effective. Understanding AI best practices is a challenge that spans from the C-suite to every layer of your organisation. Implementing digital initiatives now inherently involves AI, so the role of the CIO has expanded to ensure effective implementation and execution. Gartner recently reported that only 48% of digital initiatives meet or exceed their business outcome targets, meaning that the difference between your business thriving or failing lies at the feet of the CIO.
Understanding the steps to success, and most importantly safeguarding against risk factors with AI, is therefore essential for the new year and beyond.
Without an audit, you are blindly charging into the new year
Delivering effective AI initiatives first involves understanding the needs at every stage of your business. Communicating what works best for your business strategy, what your current technology stack can onboard and how easy it is for your employees to understand and navigate are challenges that can only be properly understood by getting to grips with your systems. One solution does not necessarily suit all; getting the initial audit is critical to know where your starting point is and what direction you need to go in.
Before blindly charging into the new year with a reckless approach to digital transformation, take that extra step to assess your current operations and how easy onboarding new technology will be not just at a senior level, but for everyone who needs to work with it. Implementing tools where they will have the most impact is more effective than a blanket approach, but this is only possible to implement once you know what tools you already have in place.
Managing your AI investments like a portfolio is the smart approach
Managing your AI investments like a portfolio is a perhaps unexpectedly specific approach. It can switch the focus of operational changes from a more general approach to making specific, productive changes. First assessing how data travels across your organisation allows for upgrading or replacing your existing technology stack with greater advancements. Take time to meaningfully evaluate the employee experience. How are they really using the tools that are currently integrated into the company tech stack? Is the tech limited, or does there need to be more training internally? Identifying where gaps really lie is the first step to take before undertaking any digital transformation where AI tools claim to make vast improvements.
Build a roadmap by identifying technologies that augment and connect your workforce of today (and tomorrow) and align investment with your CEO’s new strategy for growth by using technology to help teams be more productive. Assess and benchmark your digital employee experience – the tools, technologies and systems currently utilised – and their maturity to help identify strengths and opportunities to mature.
Driving measurable value with the right operating models
Once the initial assessment of resources and needs has been completed, understanding the level of business value that needs impacting becomes the next step. Measuring confidence-influence value – the certainty of impact versus the level of control about decision-making and outcomes – is a challenge to plot and can aid in the next stage of categorising the value you’re trying to impact. This is integral to understanding what can be an immediate change for tangible results, and what might require levels of experimentation, monitoring and adjustment based on external, uncontrollable factors.
Identifying variances in cost, value and risks for your business and stakeholders helps in also framing the narrative within a broader context. Value streams help visualise and expose metrics related to products, services and technologies, thereby turning lagging indicators into leading indicators. Track progress by intermediate variables so that course correction can occur without feeling like a project failure. Combining these strategies turns existing data into actionable insights for the future, meaning short-term outcomes are more successful and long-term operations more strategic.
Driving this value is only possible by advancing IT through different leveraged aspects of operating model patterns. Utilising value and outcomes as the connection point can help align your IT with wider business goals. Similarly, building flexible people and work management practices can help organisations adapt more quickly to adjustments over a long-term period. Modern, outcome-oriented governance practices hold the key to harvesting the most value, which can then be followed up with strategic management practices to leverage the existing strengths of your operations.
Align cybersecurity with onboarding new technology
As with any new technology added to your existing stack, onboarding AI tools can create greater attack surfaces to defend against cyber actors. But ignoring integrated AI for security purposes can do the same thing, as employees will often utilise their own unprotected AI tools for business cases, risking massive data leaks. Battling misinformation, digital interference, manipulation and access control will already be part of your CISO’s role, but ongoing cybersecurity strategy must account for securing existing data alongside AI integration. Practicing application security and applying the basics of a Zero-Trust philosophy across non-IT environments and with external partners must be enforced from your CISO down to the employee level. Quickly identify potential data and identity risks to drive proactive security. AI-boosted threat detection has already proven to help with threat response practices, aiding in building improved defence capabilities.
Assess potential security risk before onboarding new technology across different departments, ensuring that additions remain secure across cross-functional teams. If ignored, new technology can widen attack surfaces, giving cyber actors easier entry points for massive disruption, data loss and exploitation and financial as well as organisational setbacks.
Meeting the needs of tomorrow with a lasting impact
Addressing the dynamically evolving work landscape and preparing a business for the future is an urgent priority, not a vanity goal. Developing a team that can drive real organisational outcomes, whilst setting an innovation ambition covering business goals and execution is key to continuous optimisation. AI is not only a target for innovating your technology stack, but rather also a means to help existing operations. Therefore, scaling AI growth to meet the needs of tomorrow is just as important for lasting innovation and impact.
Scale AI across the enterprise by leveraging existing analyst research and frameworks to prioritise use cases, and instilling AI engineering practices into IT operations and infrastructure outcomes. Putting responsible generative AI use at the heart of your efforts promotes easy integration in ‘Human + AI’ activities. This can be further emphasised by investing in data quality through governance, including AI literacy skills programs that focus on the action as well as the theory and knowledge behind it.
Driving your AI initiatives in tandem with your existing teams, rather than replacing them, aids in promoting future-proof operations that build from a rich bank of past data to build stronger future operations. Whilst AI is the clear technological tool of choice for businesses going into 2025, the specifics of what your business needs to best aid its operations will be different on a case-by-case basis. Effective planning and consulting where your business is now is the best step to starting your AI journey in 2025 and beyond.
