Brain Teasers
Close your eyes and count to 10 – well that’s easy.
Close them again and count to 51238 – not so easy – that would take you around 14 hours.
This demonstrates Data dimensions – Scale, Quantity, Time – the current standards.
But what number is INFINITY? You’ll need a coffee for this, and even after that, you won’t have an answer.
The mean price of one bag of Lay’s chips bought in 38000 forecourts – BI can do It – but relevance?
Understanding the reason for outcomes AND using this to your advantage – the “Political” dimension.
Artificial helps Human
System-based AI thinks and assists humans in understanding issues and making decisions, but it thinks and reasons with different drivers and results as can be seen below:
| Human Intelligence | Artificial and Machine Intelligence |
| Logical or illogical | Always logical |
| Influenced by experience | Influenced by experience |
| Emotion | Maths – data, trends, algorithms, “Machine Learning” |
| Constrained by knowledge | Constrained by data |
| Unable to “unlearn” – bias | Constant re-learning, “Machine Learning” |
| Depreciates in breadth and value | Value increases |
| Elements of guesswork | Influence, prediction and confidence |
AI – Why? Future Trend of Business Strategy
Strategy has been the focus of Business Schools and Board Rooms for centuries. Sometimes it’s about winning and other times it’s about survival. It still depends on the political, economic, social, technological, legal and ethical environment that prevails in the markets you trade (yes PESTLE Analysis, Prof. Francis Aguilar, c1967)
The interpretation of the right strategy and strategic guidance has adapted over time, as it should, and right now AI is one flavor of our time.
Why? Looking at the recent past (100 years) a ladder of strategic progression includes:
- Profit Focus – Revenue must always exceed Cost
- Compete on Focus, Low Cost, or Differentiation
- Boston Consulting Group Quadrants – Dog, Cash-cow, Star, and Question-mark
- Time to Market – First mover advantage yields a 12% revenue lead
- Centralize then decentralize – it depends
- Resilience – Adapt or die
- Radical disruption – change the market – not just strategy
- NOW – Be on Top of your Data – digitize, adapt fast, really fast, to changing market drivers, hit opportunities before the rest do. And technology leads here through Digital Transformation with AI in its arsenal (or should that be Liverpool?)
AI – What? The Business Benefit
It’s fine having a strategy, but what are the tactics companies and people can employ to help, that AI practically offers today.
- Robotic and Cognitive Automation
- Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to automate physical processes
- Chat Bots to interact and unblock admin
- On-line exchange routing – cellular networks
- Checking documents for specific “content segments” – legal research and consistency
- Cognitive – Two Aspects
Insights
- PREDICT what a customer might buy, credit risk by customer, delivery risk of supply
- IDENTIFY credit card, and other fraud
- AID insurers, investment-traders and commodity-buyers with accurate actuary and forecasts
Engagement
- IT help Desks – routing to possible solutions via keywords and phrases
- Healthcare advice, matching basic symptoms to possible treatment/cure, dealing with IoT/ data
- Retail product/service recommending with “rich language” and images – ask questions naturally
AI self-educates and refines with Machine Learning (ML), bringing prediction, confidence, anomaly detection, computer vision and more.
AI How- Adoption Phases
Knowing more about AI and ML is essential, but like all knowledge it’s the application of it that matters, makes the difference, and brings business results.
For many years I have enjoyed helping companies apply IT to their business processes together. And SYSPRO can now help us further. AI/ML is really useful business IT. My approach to getting it to work for your busines is an adaptation of application of any business IT. What’s the ”How”? The following is my summary:
First Steps
- Learn that AI fueled by ML is about enabling supportive insights – relevant stuff that helps
- Configure AI to use facts/logic to provide better quality, reliable insight – but check for sense
- Start with one area to improve. Let AI help but not replace humans making decisions – just yet
This could include Forecasting, Analytics/BI moving forward bringing in prediction
Second Phase
- Start Dealing with BIG Data
- Yes quantity, but more about breadth and depth
- Sifting out the irrelevant and focusing on what matters
- Allow visibility of Influences with confidence and without conscience – so start to believe it
- Seek well-researched (data-mined) suggestions – suggesting “best” decisions – you still decide
Discover profitable channels/customers/products/suppliers/opportunities, plan/execute better
Three – Probable Future
- Reliable decisions better than humans replacing uncertainty
- Huge background analysis, seeking additional data without request – to reach certainty
- MAKING major decisions in nanoseconds – with no human intervention
- Drive the boring or tricky aspects of business and life without the need for humans
Share trading, traffic management, autonomous everything (not just driverless cars), supply chain optimization, strategy execution, refinement and success
Yes, SYSPRO has built-in AI you can use today, and we can help you apply it. So reduce over-emotional guesswork and start getting SYSPRO to help with MRP parameter maintenance, forecasting, prediction of likely debtors or failing suppliers. As usual, just “paddling in the shallow water” will never get you started – jump in and learn to swim.
It’s time to say Aye-Aye to AI.
