Preparing for AI: Unlocking growth through structured data and automation

So called "digital champions" in Austria achieved in average a ~6% higher revenue growth and ~6% higher productivity rates, according to a 5-year study from Accenture (see source below, article in "trending topics").

That's great news for many companies. Another number from the very same study is, only 5% of all companies belong to this elite group on top, leaving 95% behind, but with significant potential to catch up. Where do you see yourself on this scale?

Unfortunately, there is a roadblock waiting for the 95%. Before they can capture this impressive potential, they first need to take care of some unpleasant homework. AI is an automation layer. Automation requires standards. Standards arise from learning. Learning follows trying. And that’s the first difficult part, step one: Trying. It requires bravery.

As a result of intense and rigid discipline for trying and optimizing, we earn standards that are worth automating. With automation as our ultimate outcome in mind, we want to approach things differently, because it requires us to make our learnings explicit. In contrast to the explicit learning route, e.g. when we learn a sport, we practice and, at some point, become better at it. We learn on a tacit and implicit level. The more we professionalize our training, the more we learn explicitly, because we probably rely on data and structured methods. Coming back to our professional work life, we need this clean data in a digital format. And to leverage our data for automation (and AI), we want it to be structured, cleaned, sorted, and maybe even labeled data. This data is more useful to us than random, unsorted clutter.

Bottom line:
Instead of thinking top down (how could we apply this new technology to our business?) we want to work bottom up and start with the basics to create lasting and measurable value. Automation only adds value to repetitive workflows that we intend to scale. There is no difference between a production line and office workflows about this fundamental logic.

 Source: Studie: KI wird zum Wachstumstreiber für heimische Unternehmen