Build Your AI Strategic Roadmap

Develop your AI strategy to maximize return and mitigate risks with your AI investments

Analyst Perspective

Transforming the organization with AI

Today, every organization is being challenged to determine their strategy on the use of AI-based solutions. Never in our history has a technology become so accessible and at that same time, so disruptive with the benefits and new risks introduced. This is a unique time in our history where the benefits of AI are transformative and readily accessible to all organizations. But the introduction of transformative capabilities also introduces new risks that need to be planned for.

A successful business-driven AI strategy requires:

• An AI strategy that is driven by and aligned to the organizational strategy.
• Responsible AI guiding principles to mitigate the risks that are introduced with the deployment of AI-based solutions.
• Candidate business capabilities that can be augmented or automated with AI that drive business value.
• A roadmap to deliver and support new AI-based solutions.

Principal Research Director
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight

Create awareness among the CEO and C-suite of executives about the potential benefits and risks of transforming the business with generative AI.

Key concepts

AI Vision Statement

An effective AI vision statement is usually forward-looking and aspirational and reflects the organization’s commitment to leveraging AI to deliver positive and responsible outcomes.

Strategic AI Principles

Guiding principles that align the business strategy with the AI strategy and reflect the organization’s overall approach to the use of AI. Whether AI should be used or not and the decision whether to buy or build the AI application are examples of strategic principles.

Responsible AI Principles

Guiding principles to govern the development, deployment, and maintenance of AI applications to mitigate the possible risks from deploying AI-based applications. In addition, these principles also address human-based requirements that AI applications should address.

AI Strategy

A business-driven AI strategy is aligned with the organizational strategy of the firm. Key components of the AI strategy include:

• AI Vision and Mission Statements
• Business Value Drivers
• Strategic AI Principles
• Responsible AI Principles

Business Value Drivers

These drivers represent the key ways value is recognized by the organization and are used to ensure candidate AI initiatives are aligned to the goals and objectives of the organization.

AI Maturity Model

AI strategic directions are part of the overall strategic planning process and are designed to align AI initiatives with the organization’s vision and goals. These directions provide a roadmap regarding where to leverage AI to maximize the benefits to the organization.

Your challenge

This research is designed to help organizations that are looking to:

• Develop a business-driven AI strategy to maximize benefits and minimize the risks associated with AI-based solutions.
• Understand the potential opportunities to improve business outcomes and best practices to govern the risks with developing or deploying AI applications.
• Assess the organization’s capabilities to provide AI governance, a data platform optimized for analytics, access to AI skills, processes, and the supporting technology infrastructure.
• Have clear metrics in place to measure the progress and success of AI initiatives.
• Build the roadmap to implement the candidate use cases.

Common obstacles

These barriers are challenging for many organizations:

• Getting all the right business stakeholders together to develop the organization’s AI strategy, vision, and objectives.
• Establishing responsible AI guiding principles to guide AI investments and deployments.
• Advancing the AI maturity of the organization to meet requirements of data and AI governance as well as human-based requirements such as fairness, transparency, and accountability.
• Assessing AI opportunities and developing policies for use.

Info-Tech’s definition of a business-oriented AI strategy

An effective AI strategy is driven by the business stakeholders of the organization and focused on delivering improved business outcomes.

A business-oriented AI strategy includes:

• guiding principles for AI applications that are fully driven by the business needs, and capabilities that are essential to the organization.
• a strategy that tightly weaves business needs and the applications required to support them. It covers AI governance, data management, people, processes, and technology.
• a way to ensure that the necessary people, processes, and technology are in place at the right time to sufficiently support business goals.
• an AI strategy roadmap to communicate how strategic initiatives will address business concerns.

This blueprint in context

This guidance covers how to create an AI strategy roadmap for executing AI initiatives

Scope

• This blueprint provides guidance for aligning your AI strategy with your organizational strategy.
• This approach sets the foundations for building and applying responsible AI principles and AI policies aligned to corporate governance and key regulatory obligations (e.g. privacy). Both steps are foundational components of how you should develop, manage, and govern your AI program but are not a substitute for implementing broader AI governance.

Guidance on how to implement AI governance can be found in the blueprint linked below.

Download our AI Governance blueprint

Measure the value of this blueprint

Leverage this blueprint’s approach to ensure your AI initiatives align with and support your key business drivers

This blueprint will guide you to drive and improve business outcomes. Key business drivers will often focus on:

• Improving customer experience
• Increasing revenue
• Reducing costs
• Improving time to market
• Reducing risk

Once you implement your 12-month roadmap, start tracking the metrics below over the next fiscal year (Year 1) to assess the effectiveness of measures:

In phase 1 of this blueprint, we will help you identify the key AI strategy initiatives that align to your organization’s goals. Value to the organization is often measured by the estimated impact on revenue, costs, time to market, or risk mitigation.

In phase 4, we will help you develop a plan and a roadmap for addressing any gaps and introducing the relevant AI capabilities that drive value to the organization based on defined business metrics.