ROI the AI Way, Part 1

Developing and deploying artificial intelligence requires organizations to decide two things up front: 1) where they’ll play the AI game, and 2) how they’ll win it. In today’s post, we’ll look at the first one.

Where to deploy AI is an all-important question.
I see too many companies focused on “cool” AI projects that are basically science experiments for the R&D division. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with that—if you’re a research organization or part of a Team whose role it is to test cutting edge technologies. For everyone else, it represents a misplaced priority. Experimental AI initiatives don’t create long-term value and thus typically fail to pay off.

Instead, follow the money. Point your AI program to the most valuable parts of the enterprise. You don’t need speculative AI projects. You need tactical AI mapped to the P&L.

That’s right. If you’re an AI leader, your knowledge of profit and loss statements matters far more than technical expertise.  Only a student of the P&Ls will know the places to prioritize AI projects — proximate to the real, everyday revenue and cost problems that matter most to the company.

Believe me, your ROI will thank you. Consider:

• Having issues with revenue growth? There’s an AI for that: Personalization, dynamic pricing, ancillary revenue optimization.
• Does cost reduction remain elusive? In the airline industry, predictive maintenance, network and crew scheduling, and fuel optimization are traditional problems in search of an AI update.

Despite what some vendors will try to tell you, your customer experience offerings are not one size fits all and never have been. AI-powered service agents, delay prediction, sentiment analysis—all are tactical tweaks that can yield outsized results from a value perspective.

ROI is all about risk mitigation: Fraud detection, safety analytics, compliance automation—there’s nothing sexy, cool, or revolutionary about these AI applications, but there are few things more important to the long term.

So that’s where you play the AI game—the P&L is a map pointing the way. When determining how to win, you have to look at the maturity of your current AI capabilities and what level of investment you need to make in order for them to be prepared to support the ROI projects you’ve prioritized.

More on that next time in ROI the AI Way, Part 2.