IT Briefcase, US: Associate Vice President at Cognizant Accelerator Says Business Leaders Should Take an “AI-First” Approach When Addressing Business Goals

“We believe 2017 is the year when intelligent technologies will become pervasive across the business ecosystem,” writes Matt Smith. “In our recent study, artificial intelligence (AI) — along with big data/analytics — was regarded by nearly all respondents as the top driver of business change between now and 2018.” Excerpts:

“Opportunities abound for applying intelligent automation — Cognizant’s term for the spectrum of capabilities enabled by AI. Today, intelligent automation has moved beyond the back office, and into front-line, customer-facing systems that are quickly changing the way businesses and their customers interact.

Across industries, business are already adopting AI to improve business processes, accelerate outcomes, increase data quality, and enable powerful and predictive analytics. Even more compelling, they are improving the human role of their organizational operations. By collaborating with intelligent systems, people are now more empowered than ever to perform uniquely human activities — which is to think creatively, solve problems, prioritize and interact with clients, partners and coworkers in smarter, more productive ways than ever before possible.

To chart their path forward and move toward adopting intelligent automation, organizations should consider the following three approaches:

1. Think Big; Scale Fast

2. Form a Winning Partnership

3. Automate On-Demand

Business leaders should begin now with their plans to understand both the present and future opportunities of AI. When addressing their business goals, they should lead with an “AI-first” approach. And because intelligent automation can be tried, tested and either fail or scale in very short cycles, organizations should automate first and start capturing the benefits right away. In parallel, they can take the time to consider the broader, more comprehensive opportunities as they learn from past experiences where they want to ultimately build scale and acceleration.

The promise of intelligent automation is real, and it’s here now. Taking a wait-and-see stance is not an option when intelligent systems are already fast at work, providing real outcomes and helping companies transform processes across their organizations.”

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