How to Survive a Crisis with AI-Driven Operations

2. Employee upskilling

As an enterprise turns to AI during a crisis — whether for predictive sales modelling or automating customer-center operations — leaders must prioritize developing employees’ core competencies around AI. Employees skilled in AI will be of course be needed to develop and operate the new automation advancements, but the benefit extends beyond this. AI-skilled employees can be tapped to create a roadmap on how to best leverage the technology to drive business value in times of crisis. Organizations should consider developing internal reskilling and upskilling programs or using third party learning platforms to help employees develop AI specializations. Employees can also be instrumental in galvanizing coworkers to readily adopt new AI technology, accelerating adoption rates as an organization looks to quickly scale up the technology across the business to adjust operations in response to a crisis.

3. Clear data strategy and execution framework

Enterprises need a clear data strategy around data governance in order to scale up AI quickly and successfully. Ensuring they have a clear set of repeatable protocols and methodologies in place to help them execute that strategy effectively is critical, so leaders don’t have to worry about compliance as they scale up AI in the face of a crisis.  

For instance, one of our clients, a major global energy player created a data marketplace to make data more easily accessible for non-technical users. Given the explosion in data, it was important to minimize access time and maximize value delivery time. The marketplace enables data-search across multiple big data platforms with a review and rating system for data thereby allowing the best data to self-emerge.

COVID-19 has no doubt revealed flaws in businesses where AI could have been deployed to prevent these flaws from being exposed or created to begin with. If strategically implemented, enterprises can leverage AI to build resilience that’s not only critical in a time of immediate need – – but vital in preparing for the next crisis.