AI is a divisive topic today. Ask a room full of people, and you will find yourself speaking to two distinct camps. A 2023 Gartner survey of finance leaders found that 39 per cent of organisations are already using AI or machine learning tools, with 32 per cent reporting uncertainty or having no plans in place to do so.
Why? Beyond the ethical debates, it boils down to how and why we use AI. At Flexxon, we utilise AI holistically and build this around three key aspects: to enhance productivity, empower customers to be a part of the process, and elevate cybersecurity standards in our products and services.
Implementing AI-powered solutions is not a matter of jumping on a trend and trying to impress customers — it is about the value that it brings to processes and outcomes. At the basic level, it must have the ability to automate, enhance decision-making, and ultimately increase productivity and efficiency.
With this in mind, we implemented an AI innovation challenge for all departments within Flexxon that commenced in Q4 2023 for this exact purpose.
You must practice what you preach
Prior to rolling this out officially across the company, the management team conducted a sandbox trial of our own. Researching, testing, and rooting out AI tools that served us well.
As a CEO with days packed full of meetings across multiple timezones, I sought tools that not only accurately but also intuitively helped me log the discussions and action points of my meetings. I knew even before I began that this would not be an easy pick, but perhaps not the full magnitude of how many options I would need to test before finding a useful AI-powered meeting assistant.
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I went through more than five different AI meeting assistants, some much more capable than others. The list includes the usual suspects when Googling “Top AI Meeting assistants”, such as Otter, Fathom, Read, etc. What did I learn? Not all tools are created equal, and other mitigating factors include the level of customisation, ease of integration into other workflows and software, and user-friendliness.
Naturally, this meant that when rolling out the company-wide initiative, I knew that it would be a journey of trial and error — and perseverance.
For SMEs in particular, the main challenges faced when implementing AI solutions in a business include cost assessments, balancing free and paid options, and ease of integration with existing systems. This must then be followed by a period of implementation to analyse and assess the value it brings to the company, employees and customers.
I believe these are necessary amounts of friction to reap the benefits of truly valuable AI solutions that can augment our existing processes for the better.
Understand that there are no shortcuts, no one-size-fits-all solutions
Getting started is usually the biggest hurdle. Overcoming the inertia of “how we’ve always done it” towards exploring unfamiliar solutions that require a shift in processes. That’s why we decided to introduce our AI challenge at the department level, to ensure each team had the support within their departments while also allowing them to distil their pain points to translate this into a tangible hunt for a solution.
Nine departments in total are currently a part of the programme, from finance and HR to sales and marketing, IT and R&D. Applying tools that assist with automation, predictive analytics, customer service, content generation, and more.
Before launching this initiative, many departments and individual employees had already been dabbling in AI tools to better their work processes. However, officialising it provided an added incentive to properly analyse, troubleshoot, and extend any useful practices for fellow colleagues to consider as well.
Noticeably, even before officially trialling these new tools, this initiative has organically led to a push for employees to think outside the box and question how certain processes can be enhanced through AI solutions. Even long-standing ones.
For instance, our product team has moved from manually creating training videos and certifications on separate platforms to integrating AI-generated videos and certification programmes into one end-to-end platform. Not only does it save them time and effort, but it also enhances the data collection and analysis portion of their work.
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This is just the beginning of this initiative, and I am personally excited to hear from the team on how each of their projects is panning out over the next two months!
Moving forward with AI
Looking beyond that foundational level of AI implementation, we should be able to tap into the technology to create personalised experiences, scale business opportunities, and create seamless end-to-end processes that empower teams to perform better and happier.
Of course, in the case of our actual cybersecurity products and solutions, the right usage of AI can revolutionise an entire industry. We tap on AI to strengthen cybersecurity capabilities, and this amazing technology allows us to break new ground in an industry that greatly requires effective innovation.
Other areas I am currently exploring in business operations include enhanced logistics and fulfilment procedures, human capital management, etc. In fact, I’m still not 100 per cent settled on my choice of AI meeting assistant because I believe there are always options for upgrades out there.
Ideas are turning into AI-powered solutions every day, so an important part of AI implementation for individuals and businesses is to keep an open mind and maintain flexibility in finding the best solutions to address your unique needs.
My simple rule for extracting true impact from AI usage is that AI for content generation is not enough; make it integrated, end-to-end.
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