A Better Way of Promoting AI to Potential Buyers
Though everyone has heard about Artificial Intelligence (AI), many don’t understand it enough to embrace or adopt it, while others aren’t ready to consider it for their business. Nevertheless, AI is one of the best tools of an entrepreneur’s business. The lack of understanding the value of AI is the basis of the fear of AI and therefore the hesitation to adapt AI to one’s business.
Troy Hiltbrand[1] (2019), chief digital officer at Kyäni (kyanicorp.com), authored an insightful article for TDWI’s newsletter, Upside, where data means business – article title: How to Sell AI to Your Business. TDWI (Transforming Data with Intelligence) is a research and educational company for data and analytics.
Hiltbrand suggests that an effective approach is a focus on business value and scalability. Before trying to sell AI, begin with the value that AI can bring to the enterprise. There are three values – enhanced insights, improved user experience, and optimized process improvement.
Enhanced insights: The real meaning of business reports, metrics, and analytics is expanded and enhanced by the insightful use of artificial intelligence that opens optimization, forecasting, prediction, and fraud detection of one’s business measurements. AI can furnish the right information the company needs at the time it has to make critical decisions to move forward.
Improved user experience: A company’s customers are the users of one’s products. How can your enterprise best communicate with your users to convey the real meaning and purpose of your products? The use of NLP (natural language processing) through chatbots or conversational chatbots will quickly fill this role of helping users deeply understand both the vision and products of the company. Do your customers understand you and why you exist?
Optimized process improvement: Your company uses multiple processes from design to develop to market to sell; these flows move at different speeds and agility. AI can automate many of the processes as well as evaluate the data of the flow to predict better decisions along the way and help the human agents better perform their tasks. AI can help the communication between agents with chatbots as well as the connection of Internet of Things. Everybody wins.
The second selling focus is that of scalability. Hiltbrand counsels to “start small, monitor the contribution to your organization’s goals, and grow from there.” Begin with pilot projects to test readiness, maturity, and skills and aptitudes of employees.
Of course, selling demands the right use of terminology. Used-cars sales don’t work. Instead of “artificial intelligence”, switch to “augmented intelligence” or “assistive intelligence” or “intelligent automation.” This helps put AI in a context to avoid biases and stir up the fear that AI will replace jobs.
Recall that emphasizing value – what it’s worth to us – and scale – what we can handle – will lessen fears and will open new thoughts about adjusting to something new.
Take-away: Don’t sell a shiny new technology like AI; sell “how to get the job done.”
Sources:
[1] Hiltbrand, Troy, (2019); How to Sell AI to your Enterprise.
