As found in Bain and McKinsey research, marketing and sales teams benefit from Generative AI (Gen AI) through enhanced personalization, efficiency, and strategic insights, while customer service teams leverage AI for automation, improved customer experiences, and proactive issue resolution. Both areas see increased productivity and effectiveness as a result of integrating AI technologies into their operations.

Okay, so there is a huge benefit to deploying Gen AI in your business.

Is your company deploying Gen AI at all?

Well your company could be in the 40% of companies which are still exploring Gen AI or the 20% which isn’t even looking yet.

As highlighted in the IBM survey it reports that only 40% of companies are actively deploying Gen AI and this is in line with early adopters.

So, it appears that the Gen AI ship hasn’t sailed yet and your company is in good company on shore.

Consistently cited, in the sources below, one big reason for not adopting Gen AI is the lack of skills for implementation.

Gen AI Skills

How do you get Gen AI skills into your business?  You could certainly hire new people or consultants with these skills but there is then the learning curve about your unique business.

A better approach is to have your employees learn the tools and what can be done.  Then perhaps augment with some consultants for specific needs.  The reason this approach is better is that Gen AI is a tool which can and most likely will be used by your employees everyday.

Like any new technology tool, it will take some time to understand but then become second nature in everyday business.  I remember when there were training classes for employees to learn how to use this new thing called a computer mouse and windows.  Laughable today but novel when they were introduced.

Start Slow But With Purpose

Put out the call to employees that your business is looking for people to join a task force to explore the possibilities of Gen AI for your business.  This can drive engagement with your employees.  They will think about the work they do and how it can become more efficient.  This can also identify your Gen AI leaders in your business.

Help this task force become visible within your organization utilizing some branded items such as shirts and other items.  Give them items to give away to other employees who provide suggestions to them.  This will work in all the other employees in your business to the cause.

Now that you have formed the team, made them visible within your business and provided them with a goal and way to connect to other employees, it is time to provide them some first Gen AI steps.

Gen AI First Steps

Encourage the task force to find out what Gen AI is and provide them some time during the work day to explore and play with the tools available.

The two main places to start are Open AI and Google.  These companies are working on the leading AI tools with the other big tech companies also pushing their own models.  Microsoft has partnered with Open AI early in the process and worked Open AI models into the copilot product line.

Play with Gen AI here

I would suggest you pay the nominal amount for the employee accounts with these tools. This provides some advanced benefits but if you don’t have the budget both platforms offer a free toolset to get started.

Open AI – the leader and first to open up their model to the public in the form of ChatGPT.  They have introduced many more accessible tools for images, video, audio and text processing.

Start the Open AI exploration here: https://chatgpt.com/

Google Gemini – Google produced their own model and provide the access through their tool called Gemini.

Start the Google exploration here: https://gemini.google.com/

Encourage lunch and learns led by task force members to show other employees what they have learned and other discoveries.  Create mini events around this to engage your employees and drive excitement.

Encourage the Task Force to go Deeper

Gen AI and AI in general is a vast and quickly changing technology.  It has many different areas to dig into and explore.  Gen AI, itself, can be used as a tool to explore more.  Yes, Gen AI to dig deeper into Gen AI, wow.

There are many great sources of knowledge to learn more and dig deeper into AI.  One such source is an open platform with free short and long courses dedicated to AI tools.

This platform is called https://www.deeplearning.ai/

It was created in 2017 by machine learning pioneer Andrew Ng. It started with a few courses and has ballooned recently into may courses all free to engage with and explore. 

Like the 60% We are Exploring Gen AI

Like the 60% of companies, our company has begun the journey to explore Gen AI and all that it has to offer.  On this journey internally and with our clients we are creating unique employee programs to drive Gen AI adoption with excitement, enthusiasm and fun!

We wish you well on your Gen AI journey and please know, although we are not Gen AI experts, we are experts in employee programs and are here to assist you and your employees along the way.  It is time to get on the Gen AI ship!

Sources:

McKinsey on AI-powered marketing and sales

https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/marketing%20and%20sales/our%20insights/ai%20powered%20marketing%20and%20sales%20reach%20new%20heights%20with%20generative%20ai/ai-powered-marketing-and-sales-reach-new-heights-with-generative-ai.pdf

Bain & Company on Generative AI in sales and marketing

https://www.bain.com/globalassets/noindex/2023/how-generative-ai-is-forging-productivity-in-sales-and-marketing.pdf

Data Suggests Growth in Enterprise Adoption of AI is Due to Widespread Deployment by Early Adopters

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2024-01-10-Data-Suggests-Growth-in-Enterprise-Adoption-of-AI-is-Due-to-Widespread-Deployment-by-Early-Adopters 

Open AI – ChatGPT

https://chatgpt.com/

Google Gemini

https://gemini.google.com/

DeepLearning platform

https://www.deeplearning.ai/