The Counterintuitive AI Strategy: Do Anything – And Do It Now!
The one question that has dominated strategy discussions over the last year is, “What should our AI strategy be?” It is probably the most difficult strategic question to answer since 1995 when the question was, “What should our internet strategy be?”
The challenge defies standard strategic planning. The heart of strategy is having a data-driven thesis of what you expect the future will look like and organizing and investing to deliver against that thesis. AI’s rapid evolution in capabilities, dynamic market landscape, and rapidly expanding use cases make this traditional planning next to impossible.
So, what should companies do?
Topline recently completed a study on the use of AI by customer organizations in B2B tech companies, most with $100M to $1B in revenue. We recommend the following course of action:
Do Anything – And Do It Now!
The study interviewed Chief Customer Officers at 21 companies about their experience and use of AI in their organizations, covering Support, Account Management, Education and Professional Services. We found that customers are asking the same question vendors are – “What should our AI strategy be?”
The answer most have come to is mass experimentation – trying lots of different AI solutions to see what works and to build experience. A few key findings:
- 86% of organizations were trialing or had deployed at least one AI application. 38% of organizations had deployed multiple AI applications.
- Across the 36 implementations participants shared, there were 30 different AI vendors used. Practically all of the technologies had been deployed or trialed just once among this group.
- 24 of the 30 vendors deployed were point solution vendors – customers are very open to bringing in new vendors for AI and do not simply rely on the offerings of their enterprise vendors like Gainsight or Salesforce.
- Most implementations had been judged a success, either anecdotally (“I can pull together a report on the status of my customer’s implementation in 5 minutes before I meet with them”) or demonstrably through their metrics (“We diverted 50% more cases”).
Stake Your Claim!
In a world where your customers are trying anything and everything, you need to stake your claim, and quickly. Work on getting a minimally viable solution to market as soon as possible to generate successful reference customers. Then take stock of the market, see how it has evolved and figure out what to do next. While there is limited visibility on what will happen next and what the business potential of your AI investment will be, without a foothold, you could easily find yourself the odd vendor out.
If you would like to learn more about this study contact us.