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In an era marked by relentless digital advancements, companies invest billions in transformative efforts that sometimes fall short of expectations. The root causes often lie in enterprise silos, sub-optimal tech investments and a complex web of legacy solutions. However, a larger foundational flaw, the failure to adapt to an ever-changing and increasingly complex environment, exacerbates these issues. The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-led digital transformations has brought this resistance to enterprise evolution into sharper focus.
We stand at the beginning of a major technological era set to be dominated by AI, and its dynamics promise to accelerate the pace of change. For enterprises to navigate a successful AI-led digital transformation, they must understand the paradigm shift occurring in the world of work. Embracing a platform-based strategy enables enterprises to foster collaboration between humans and AI effectively. This strategic shift towards platform utilization equips organizations with the necessary tools to unlock new avenues for growth and innovation. Such adoption ensures a harmonious integration with foundational enterprise systems, mitigating disruption. By focusing on a platform-centric model, businesses can leverage the power of AI to augment human capabilities, streamline operations and drive significant advancements without compromising their existing infrastructural integrity.
Addressing the ethical challenges
The evolving landscape of work is witnessing a profound transformation as the fusion of human potential with AI takes center stage. Concerns about the ethical implications of AI are well-known, including the potential for perpetuating bias and discrimination and its impact on employment and job security. Ensuring that AI is developed and deployed ethically and responsibly is crucial, taking into account fairness, transparency and accountability.
The rise of technology has consistently disrupted various industries, creating new opportunities and challenges for humans to adapt and solve. AI-led transformation follows this pattern, and it is vital to approach its impact on human workers with a balanced and nuanced perspective. While AI has the potential to automate certain jobs and tasks, it also creates vast opportunities and jobs, particularly in the field of data science and machine learning. Thus, it is essential to view AI as a complement to human workers rather than a replacement.
Amplifying human potential
According to an EdgeVerve commissioned study by Forrester Consulting, large enterprises and IT leaders are more inclined to an AI-driven approach for digital transformation, seeking to augment employee potential and experience. In fact, 64% of decision-makers considered connecting human and AI capabilities a core need of their digital initiatives.
To flourish in this AI-first era and evolve into an AI-first business, enterprises must embrace new capabilities in AI, automation and digital operating models to drive their digital capabilities toward operational resilience and business needs. This means that the focus shifts towards leveraging AI to handle routine tasks, allowing humans to engage in a more human-centric way with their customers, employees and partners. This is achieved by equipping users with actionable insights and decision-support tools that inform and enhance every interaction. This collaborative approach amplifies human potential in the following ways:
- Reduce the learning curve: AI-enhanced, unified user interfaces reduce the learning curve by minimizing training requirements and enhancing user productivity/adoption. This not only accelerates the onboarding process for new technologies but also empowers employees to focus on refining their skills in areas that require human intuition and expertise, improving job satisfaction and increasing business performance.
- Enhance productivity: Integrating gen AI models such as GPT-4, companies can generate automated content that saves time and increases productivity. By automating mundane processes, AI empowers employees to be more productive, enabling them to contribute to the organization’s goals in more meaningful ways.
- Enable Innovation: Automated data acquisition from different partners/systems at scale and AI-powered data harmonization allows the workforce to focus on high-value tasks while minimizing manual errors. This synergy between human creativity and AI-driven efficiency paves the way for groundbreaking innovations, propelling organizations towards new heights of success.
Optimizing human-centric capabilities with automation and an AI-first mindset is significant for long-term success. Consider a telecoms operator with employees struggling to grapple with the labor-intensive process of manually reviewing a high volume of mobile tower lease contracts. By embracing an AI-powered platform equipped with capabilities for faster and more accurate extraction of contract clauses, employees were able to shift their focus toward leveraging hidden risks identified by the platform. This enabled the renegotiation of existing contracts, leading to millions of dollars in savings.
It’s no coincidence that the enterprises that are more inclined to augment human potential are those resilient enough to maximize the value of AI-led transformations. According to Forrester’s study, 72% of surveyed firms in the advanced stage of their digital transformation journey consider the connection of human and AI capabilities a core need in their firm’s digital initiatives.
Human resilience and creativity combined with AI’s hyper-productivity, intelligence at scale and accuracy will make enterprises more resilient, and companies would do well to harness this value.
A harmonious future of work: People-first, technology-led digital transformation will be the cornerstone of resilience as enterprises seek to reach unprecedented levels of innovation and excellence. The narrative around AI and automation is shifting from job replacement to the augmentation of human capabilities. Instead of fearing job displacement, employees can embrace the opportunities that AI brings to the table. Modern AI-powered platforms serve as enablers of a work environment where humans and AI complement each other’s strengths. As AI takes care of routine tasks, employees can focus on tasks that require emotional intelligence, complex problem-solving and creative thinking, contributing to a more harmonious, fulfilling and human-centered future of work.
