What does it take to make an enterprise successful with AI?
We’ve asked this question at numerous events, and heard from all sorts of experts – venture capital people, serial entrepreneurs, MIT people, etc. – and a lot of them agree that it’s a little more complicated than it might seem.
It’s one thing to say that you’re going to be an early adopter, right? That’s fine, but how are you going to use that AI? In fact, I’ve heard some nervousness from executives about just this idea: you can’t just plug in an LLM and get to work. You have to have fundamental ideas driving you toward success.
I wanted to highlight some of what we heard from Karen Stroup, CDO of Wex, in a recent presentation. Her company serves some 800,000 customers, and she’s suggesting that, again, you have to have a principled and deliberate approach to using these new technologies.
The title of her presentation: “if you build it, they won’t come.”
“That’s the sobering reality that we face in today’s AI-driven world,” she says. “AI is incredibly powerful technology, but it’s not a silver bullet, it’s not a magic wand, it’s not a cure-all that will automatically catapult your company to success.”
Comparing AI to the Internet and mobile responsive design, she called for both strategic vision and skillful application.
“A lot of people are talking about the criticality of data, the fact that harnessing the data is going to be the biggest impediment to success for companies,” she says, “and yes, data readiness is a challenge, but I would say data isn’t the biggest challenge. What about the customer?”
Fundamentally, she says, companies still need to delight customers with user-friendly frameworks.
“I know that there are multiple forms of success,” she adds, citing “tech-driven innovation, commercial acumen, brilliant savants and sheer luck” – her words, which I found to be a good list.
“All of these play a role, she says, “but at the end of the day, if you want to future proof your business, you’ll put the customer at the heart of your AI strategy.”
Now let’s look at three principles that she presented for business:
1. Prioritize Actions Over Words
What Stroup seems to be saying with this one is that you need to make sure that your products and services are actually going to be useful to the people who are your target audience.
She tells a story about customers who had initial enthusiasm, but were not able to use the platform effectively. That’s a problem.
2. Design Is As Critical As Functionality
Her second point was importance of, and focus on, design.
“Imagine you log into an app that you use every day,” she begins, describing a situation where you see a new chatbot pop up. Some people may have negative experiences with chatbots – but the chatbot might have a high accuracy rate, and be a “gold mine” of efficiency and insight.
So her company invested in design.
“We invested in the holistic experience in discovery and first use,” she explains.
3. Transform Insights Into Impact
For her third point, Stroup talks about fleet management.
Maybe the fleet manager knows what to look for, but he or she is just too busy to really effectively scour all of that data for actionable insight.
“The data is just that – it’s data,” she says.
However, she adds, with the right design, that data becomes really useful to a fleet manager or anyone else.
“Collecting data isn’t going to drive transformation.” she contends. “Data plus AI plus action will transform your business. … As we think about this, the power, the true magic of AI, lies not in the technology itself, but the impact it makes on people. The progress, the change that it can drive – at the end of the day, we’re not just mere architects of that technology, but we want to be custodians of progress. We want to drive and make human life better, because as we’ve learned, if you build it right, with the customer at the center, they will come.”
That’s a little bit about what stood out to me, about how to guide a business. That may be valuable for any number of startup people and idea people, so see what you think.
