An IIM Bangalore alumnus, Krishna is a seasoned business professional with over two decades of experience in engineering, delivery and operations areas. Prior to incepting AiDOOS in 2021, he has successfully handled key projects & initiatives across a variety of companies such as Dell, HP, WPP, Hexaware, and 42hertz.

CIO Insider recently got an opportunity to interact with Krishna, wherein he shared his insights on various aspects pertaining to implementing AI, especially from the current business context. Below are a few key extracts from the exclusive interview –

What role does AI play in the organization to maintain a competitive advantage in the market?
Artificial Intelligence is solely based on data, and data plays a significant role in AI’s performance. AI learns from whatever data is being fed into the system and accordingly responds to it. Majority of the use cases for AI till date has been for automating different processes across various industries that are considered very mundane and repetitive so that the team can focus on other critical aspects of the business. However today, AI is capable of being creative and produce content through a simple command. The prime example for this Generative AI is ChatGPT, which has completely transformed the way business world looks at AI. To maintain a competitive edge in the market using AI, companies must first identify use cases in their industry, select one that is closely associated with their USP, and integrate the technology into it. However, one must keep in mind that you can maintain a competency only until none of your competitors apply AI to that particular use case. Thus, it is paramount to think ahead of use cases, dissimilar to that of your competitors to stay ahead in the market.

Briefly explain ways in which AI initiatives can be aligned with the company’s mission and vision.
An organization must spend the majority of its time identifying problems that it is solving and the improvements that it is bringing-in. However, with the advent of Generative AI, most of the companies are rushing to chase AI wave, pick a random use case and implement a tech solution without any prior research or analysis, resulting in wastage of valuable resources and meager ROI. It becomes a throwaway work. Thus, it is very important for the organization to identify a use case that is both solving customer pain points and will yield a high ROI, and then implement AI into that particular use case. Organizations need to conduct a boot-camp to understand ‘In what ways does AI impact the customer experience, and how can we leverage AI to enhance customer engagement and satisfaction

within the organization’?

How should organizations leverage AI to enhance customer engagement and satisfaction?
Be it within the company for its own employees or outside the company for its customers, organizations must let the machines do what they are good at and the same for humans as well. The best example of this (not to do with AI) is the automatic gear switching in our cars. The beauty of AI is that it can process billions of datasets within a short time frame, which is impossible for humans to do. Given the vast amounts of consumer data that is being generated every day across every business, organizations are leveraging AI to analyze that data, identify customer preferences, their buying patterns and accordingly offer personalized recommendations to each user. Additionally, AI powered chat-bots are now able to analyze the past data of each individual customer and offer personalized query management and communication. This way, companies are able to enhance their customer experience and engagement across all channels.

What are the top two challenges you see organizations facing while implementing AI technologies?
Lack of clarity about what their primary objectives, is the major challenge that most organizations face while implementing AI into their processes. Such companies do not conduct any prior research and just go ahead with implementing AI just because many other companies are doing it. Secondly, there is a severe dearth of skilled talent who can efficiently handle AI integrated systems and applications. Thus, it is necessary for organizations to have specialized skill development and training programs within their company to train their existing workforce with the necessary technical skills and capabilities.