Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping our world, generating excitement - and concern - across industries. In a recent webinar, Linda Simovic, EVP & Chief Product Officer at People.ai, and Kate Brigham, Product Leadership Advisor and Fractional CPO at Kate Brigham Consulting joined moderator Jake Dunlap, Founder & CEO of Skaled, to explore what we can expect from AI over the next year in the go-to-market space. Their insights provide a roadmap for businesses navigating this new era in technology and work.
AI is poised to help solve common challenges – but we must overcome fears first
One of the reasons AI has gained so much traction in recent years is that generative AI (genAI) makes it easy for anyone to gain quick insights. “ It's so easy for people to get access to AI tools and see really quick, immediate value,” said Kate. “In the past with some of these other technological advancements like AR or VR, you really had to be technical to understand them. There was a pretty steep learning curve. That's just not the case with many of these genAI solutions. My 89 year old mother uses ChatGPT. I don't know a better indicator of ease of use than that.”
The goal for most organizations is to take the immediate value Kate described and operationalize it across all employees. To do this, organizations must find ways to overcome some of their legacy challenges related to data and tech burnout. Believe it or not, the two usually go hand in hand.
Data is often siloed across organizations - trapped within separate databases and tools. Teams then adopt new tools to access the information they need to run a more intelligent business, further compounding the data problem and leading to tool fatigue among employees. All of this fragmentation means data is harder to unify and analyze effectively with AI. And you still don’t have a complete picture of what’s happening across the organization.
Within organizations, there's a noticeable imbalance as sellers and other employees tend to adopt new AI tools faster than their leadership, creating a disconnect that poses its own challenges. “What we're seeing is that sellers are moving faster than company leadership right now,” said Jake. “Over the last 9 to 10 months, I've had conversations with 50-75 CTOs who are still trying to figure out this AI thing. So what we've actually seen is the reps are moving faster with genAI because they're like, ‘I see how this is gonna make my life easier.’ If your team is already doing it, you need to do something.You can't just say no to genAI and lock it down. The answer is somewhere in between.”
Emerging Trends in AI
Several trends are poised to redefine how businesses utilize AI in the near future.
Simplified Business Intelligence (BI) is one area of transformation. Tools like genAI can interpret data almost instantaneously, potentially rendering some traditional BI tools obsolete. This shift promises to make business intelligence more accessible and efficient.
“CRMs are overloaded with data,” said Linda. “And it's really hard to navigate and find everything. But what AI is really good at is reading the data and summarizing that for you and helping you find those different pockets of where you should focus.”
Training processes are also set to benefit from AI. By leveraging AI-driven knowledge bases, companies can drastically reduce training times. A real-life example of this is from Jeff Bussgang at Harvard, who created an AI-powered knowledge base for students and faculty, demonstrating the potential for rapid, consistent learning and information dissemination.
Custom demos created by AI could soon be a reality, allowing for personalized presentations to prospects in seconds. Additionally, the need for prompt engineering may diminish as AI tools evolve to anticipate user needs without detailed prompts, tailoring their responses automatically.
But in order for companies to truly gain value from AI, they need to solve their data problem mentioned in the previous section. And the right data and AI partner can help do that. “A lot of data is trapped inside these single pointed solutions,” explained Linda. “So, if you have AI being turned on inside these point solutions, then sure, you can see everything inside that one application. But you're not getting all of that data from across your company, into one place. You have to get all the data in one place first, and then you can just flip on the AI. Now you know from end-to-end where you should focus. So I think data is the biggest trend in AI. It's the answer. It's the fuel that powers everything.”
“Data is the biggest trend in AI. It's the answer. It's the fuel that powers everything.” - Linda Simovic, EVP & CPO, People.ai
Preparing for AI Integration
Organizations can take several steps to prepare for AI:
- Develop a plan: Private equity-backed companies are already creating efficiency plans incorporating AI, with estimates suggesting potential savings of up to 30%. Start creating a plan for data and AI now or get left behind.
- Mindset shift: Embrace AI as a transformative way of working. Invest in change management to maximize the value of AI solutions. “You really have to think of this not as just a new technology or a new tool, but really a different way of working and solving problems,” said Kate. ”If you just think of it as a tool, you might not get quite as far as you want.”
- Meet employees where they are: With a significant percentage of adults using AI tools independently, ensure that your chosen AI solutions are effective, safe, and IT-approved.
- Proactive engagement: AI is inevitable. Stay ahead by actively adopting and integrating AI within your organization.
- Feedback loop: Maintain a close feedback loop with your team to understand their experiences and issues with AI tools.
- Prioritize data privacy and security: Ensure that your AI tools adhere to strict data privacy and security standards. Scrub sensitive information and focus on using the right data effectively.
The coming year will be a pivotal period for businesses looking to leverage AI. By addressing common fears, understanding organizational challenges, and staying ahead of emerging trends, companies can effectively navigate the AI landscape.
“I will tell you, it's already happening in your organization,” warned Jake. “You can try to have the perfect policy with everything put together. But people are already using it. We need to appreciate where AI is today versus the stories in the news 12 months ago. The tools have evolved, they are consistently evolving and you cannot let fear slow things down.”
Preparing now–with a focus on data integrity, employee engagement, and strategic planning–will position organizations to thrive in an AI-driven future.
Watch the webinar replay for more insights.