New AI Readiness Assessment Tool Now Available
Many companies overestimate whether they are AI-ready. In the 2020 CIO Survey, Gartner stated that only 19% of CIOs claimed their AI projects to be in production. Meaning that when it comes to deploying AI initiatives all the way to production, a whopping 80% don’t make it. At Appen, we’ve seen our customers experience 3x the success, which is why we built an AI Readiness Assessment. It’s designed to level-set companies in their AI journey, providing practical guidance on how to get to the next stage and beat the odds of AI initiatives falling dead in the water. If your organization is getting AI-ready, it can be daunting. Not only is there a less than exciting success rate, but the payback point for AI often takes longer than companies expect, and quantifying AI benefits can be challenging as many are qualitative benefits, like improved decision-making, for example. In the 2020 State of AI and Machine Learning report, 82% of respondents reported leveraging AI within their business. It’s no longer an option for companies to ignore AI – companies must look for ways to become AI-ready to stay competitive. So what can companies do to improve their chances of success?Understand Where You Are in Your AI Journey
After scoping thousands of AI projects, it has become clear to us that there are a few key things companies can do to elevate their success at deployment, regardless of where you are in your AI journey. This includes identifying the right problem to solve (the Goldilocks problem), participating in responsible AI, building the proper organizational structure, and using high-quality training data. While that’s just a short list of things a company can look at, successful companies will look at where they are in their AI journey to understand what they can do to reach the next stage. Companies who know how AI-ready they are will better understand what they need to consider when moving forward with their AI initiatives. By taking the AI Readiness assessment, companies can discover which of the four stages their company falls into – learning, scaling, differentiating, or leading. From here, companies can see what percentage of other companies are in that stage, what characteristics put them into that stage, and, most importantly, discover what to focus on to advance your company’s level of AI readiness. Once you know your company’s level of AI readiness, the assessment tool provides recommendations on how teams can move forward. For groups that find themselves struggling with the stage they are in, recommendations are provided for what teams can double down their efforts on and improve upon before trying to take their company to the next stage of AI.Learn Where Your Company Stands in Comparison to the Industry Benchmark
When determining the best way to assess whether a company is AI-ready, we leaned on our annual State of AI and Machine Learning survey to understand where respondents are in their AI journey, including organization size, budget, presence of AI, scale and scope, executive participation, and responsible AI optics. Our team analyzed these responses to provide a scoring grid and a benchmark that will be measured year over year to see how the industry is progressing.
In 2020, the AI Readiness benchmark puts a majority of companies in the scaling stage. This indicates that most companies are working on increasing the initial identified value of AI and adding more resources and focus to AI programs.
Companies in the scaling stage often see the following:
- AI is becoming critical to the business
- Investment in AI is consistent and increasing
- Executives may have participation and visibility of AI initiatives
- Corporate sophistication is increasing, with more teams working on AI programs and starting to think about bias, ethics, or risk management.
