How To Measure The Business Impact Of Artificial Intelligence?

Business Impact Of Artificial Intelligence : IT leaders and industry experts provide insight on how to get a clear picture of whether your AI efforts are paying off.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is in transition, both in technological solutions and in the way it is used. Companies are increasingly taking pilots out of test labs and deploying them at scale , with some reaping significant benefits. Regardless of any uncertainty surrounding this science, ignoring its potential risks companies doing ‘old-fashioned’ going under.

But for other organizations, getting value from AI can be elusive. Your models may not be tuned and your training data sets may not be large enough . In addition, there are concerns about bias, ethics, and transparency. Launching an initiative into production before it’s ready or expanding a strategy beyond its initial phase before properly examining the results can cost a lot of money or, worse, send an organization down a business-damaging path.

How is it possible to know if a project of this magnitude will transform, or on the contrary, will sabotage a company? Without clear return on investment (ROI) numbers, they have to get creative. And, so IT leaders are measuring the value of AI.

Mature Versus Innovative Technologies

AI is certainly no exception, especially when considering degrees of maturity and potential. Proven and predictive variables such as data mining, cost and training savings, investment, and the ability to facilitate new uses influence decisions when it comes to acceptable ROI, but it is important to trust the technology, regardless no matter how new or established it is.

Some use cases are at a high level of maturity. “ We also have the boring processes of all companies. So we automated a lot of things, like ticket processing, data search and extraction, and review of contracts and subcontracts .”

For technologies with a medium level of maturity, JPL looks at whether they have the ability to enable new use cases and at what cost. For example, in the case of NASA, it could analyze images from space and send a million text titles back to Earth to describe, for example, that there is a dry lake in a particular direction.

Finally, for the most cutting-edge experimental AI technologies, the measure of success is whether they allow new science to be done and new papers to be written and published. Companies like Google and Microsoft have easy access to gigantic volumes of training data, but at JPL the data sets are hard to come by and require PhD-level experts to analyze and label them.

AI Measurement And Its Spheres Of Influence

When there is no direct way to measure the business impact of an AI project, companies will mine data for related key performance indicators (KPIs) . These variables are generally related to business objectives and may include customer satisfaction or employee retention rates, among other variables.

An example of this is Atlantic Health System, where patients are at the center of every decision, says Sunil Dadlani, its senior vice president and CIO. So in many ways, the return on investment in AI is measured by looking at improvements in patient care . These patient-centric metrics include reduced length of stay in the facility, faster treatment time, or faster insurance eligibility checks.

Measure success incrementally

Automation leading to cost reduction is the easiest and clearest way to show the economic benefits of AI , says Sanjay Srivastava, head of digital strategy at Genpact. But it can also facilitate new revenue streams or even completely transform a business model.

For example, an aircraft engine manufacturer saw that it could improve failure prediction and improve logistics so it could begin offering engines as a service. 

Alignment with the strategic vision

Then there is the reality that some projects may hurt the bottom line in the short term, but still be important and transformative in the long term . For example, a company that implements a customer service chatbot can eliminate everyday tasks.