Is Your Organization Strategically Utilizing The Potential of AI?
If you are an organization today in the latter part of 2024 and do not have a senior-level executive guiding your company through navigating how AI can boost productivity, enhance customer communication, or drive future innovation, you are likely already falling behind. Additionally, if you are utilizing AI and no one is actively assessing and managing the risks that come with using artificial intelligence, such as ethical or regulatory concerns, you are opening yourself up to risks your organization may not be able to measure.
As President of MarketPro, a premier executive recruitment firm with over 25 years of successfully placing top-tier marketing talent, I have been working with organizations to fill a new but critical type of executive role. The title and reporting structure range anywhere from VP of AI to Chief AI Officer, depending on the size of the organization and the industry.
The MarketPro team has been extensively researching the background and expertise needed for this position and has been assisting leading organizations as they seek out top talent to fill this new executive level role.
What Does An AI Officer Do, And Why Is This Position Important?
Using AI the right way can give your company competitive advantages in how to better serve customers, improve efficiency, enhance communication, foster innovation, reduce duplicate efforts, and lower costs. Some of the things this position would bring to your organization to help them achieve their strategic goals include:
Help Optimize Performance
This role would help identify areas where artificial intelligence could automate tasks that are repetitive or mundane, streamline processes, and free up valuable employees to work on more important projects. Some examples include companies utilizing AI-powered chatbots for first-line customer service and for things like keeping their equipment operational and preventing unplanned downtime through AI predictive maintenance.
Improve Customer Satisfaction
AI can help enhance customer service, personalize your customers’ experience, and improve response times. It can analyze customer data to help better predict their future needs, allowing the company to proactively align their strategy to improve customer loyalty.
Help With Product Or Process Innovation
AI can use real-time data and predictive analytics to help companies create new innovative products or enhance existing products that solve customers’ challenges faster and more effectively.
Improve Communications
Both internal and external communication can be enhanced using AI technology, such as natural language processing tools, to streamline or automate certain tasks. The VP or Chief AI Executive would ensure these tools were implemented and used properly to help teams collaborate within the organization and in interacting with the company’s target audience.
Reduce Operating Costs
Many companies are using AI to automate tasks that historically took an excessive number of man hours. This has shown a reduction of errors and significant cost savings. In fact, one large Fortune 500 publicly traded company recently revealed that AI is now doing the work of 2,000 people, which is equivalent to about 1% of their workforce. We expect these percentages to grow larger as companies embrace the capabilities that AI has to offer.
With The Great Benefits Of AI, Comes Much Responsibility
One of the biggest reasons your organization needs a dedicated executive leading your organization’s AI initiatives is for risk mitigation. Whether you know it or not, your employees are using AI to make their jobs easier. This opens the organization up for tremendous risk if they are using it improperly. Having a Chief AI Officer can pay their compensation back multiple times over in saved litigation costs, not to mention the potential damage that can be done to your brand. Understanding how AI works is critical, and a recent Forbes article pointed out that when using AI tools such as ChatGPT, it gathers data and stores it for future use, so keeping up to date on data privacy laws is a must. Most important, how is your company protecting data you deem proprietary and confidential from AI?
It is important to understand what risks are associated with your organization’s utilization of AI and what guidelines need to be put in place to ensure your company is maximizing the benefits of AI while minimizing potential risks.
For example, if someone in your HR department is using chatGPT to help them create a document that contains personal information about an employee, it is highly probable that the employee’s name and personal information are now somewhere in the technology’s memory. What is to ensure that it is not utilized inappropriately in the future? Or another example could be if someone was using AI to help them write an inter-organizational document that contained proprietary information, which is now within the control of the tool, the company could be at future risk of losing their competitive edge.
In addition to creating and implementing guidelines to ensure data privacy and other regulations are followed in relation to its use, your AI executive would help ensure that everyone within your organization understands the guidelines surrounding the use of AI in their particular role.
AI Is Not Just A Trend
AI has about as much chance of going away as does the Internet or Bitcoin. Artificial Intelligence is here to stay, and as it evolves, more companies will begin to utilize its power to further their organizational growth, seek out a competitive advantage, increase their ROI, and reduce their operational costs. Your organization needs to have a Chief AI Officer or another executive leader who will spearhead the utilization and risk management of its use. This individual will have to work in tandem with marketing, sales, operations, finance, HR, technology, and every other department to ensure these entities are using AI in the most productive way while being in compliance with how it is being used. Is your organization ready?
Let MarketPro Fill The Critical Chief AI Officer Role
If your company is ready to utilize AI to its full potential and get a competitive advantage in your industry, you are going to need a talented executive that possesses a combination of the right skills, background, vision, and expertise to implement it efficiently and without risk.
MarketPro can take the challenge of finding the perfect fit out of the equation for you and deliver top-notch, fully-vetted, qualified candidates to meet with you so your executive team can concentrate on what they do best. Contact us today to get your search started.