Having completed his MSc in IT, with PMP/ITIL and many other Certification in various technologies. Yogendra boasts of an 18 years long career during which he has worked with companies such as Ircon International, Pantaloons Retail (India), Ativio and Barista Lavazza prior to joining Barista Coffee in 2015. Some of his areas of expertise include Strategic Project Management, SAP Techno-function, Vendor Management, Data Analytics, Innovation and Adaptability Management, Regulatory and Compliance Management and many others.

How should AI be integrated with existing systems to enhance efficiency and productivity across various departments?
AI can be integrated with any technology or business process to draw optimal outcomes. For instance, AI powered chatbots can handle any kind of customer queries 24x7 and significantly cutting-down human intervention and providing instant assistance to customers. Secondly, AI integration into marketing and sales functions has garnered a lot of scope in recent times. Organizations can integrate AI to analyze large datasets, identify customer preferences and accordingly customize their marketing campaigns. We have integrated AI within our supply chain and logistics functions to have a clear picture of real time inventory and making forecasts for future purchases. As a result, AI today is regarded as the go-to technology to automate various processes with bare minimum/zero human intervention.

Tools / metrics to measure the effectiveness of AI’s implementation in an organization.

Since every organization functions based on its revenue, whenever we are integrating AI technology with any process, we need to have a clear understanding of the revenue growth that it might bring-in. Through big data analytics, the company must identify customer expectations and tweak its services in such a way that it is able to able to

provide the best quality services. Since the prime motto of implementing AI is optimizing process efficiencies, the organization must analyze the process costs and determine the success rate of this tech implementation. Customer behavior analysis is another key aspect through which a company can measure the impact of its AI integrations, wherein the company can get insights on how the market is reacting to its services pre- and post-AI integration.

How can businesses effectively leverage AI to build-up a strong USP for themselves in the market?
Personalization is the foremost and most important resultant of AI implementation, wherein it enables businesses to identify precise customer dynamics and accordingly tailor-make the products. Secondly, AI assists businesses in conducting a thorough market analysis and helps them understand their positioning in the market compared to their competitors. Additionally, implementing AI into the product development process not only reduces the time-to-market, but also cut-down on human capital, and in turn, the overall costs. This helps the company to maintain competitive pricing and have an edge over its peers in the market.

The major challenges organizations generally face during the AI implementation process.
Since most of the decision making is based on insights driven by data analytics, data quality and capability of data is the biggest challenge for any organization. Also, lack of necessary skillsets among existing employees and severe scarcity of fresh talent that is AI-ready are two very common challenges that businesses face while implementing AI into their existing processes. As a result, having training programs for up skilling its existing workforce is now mandatory for any organization that is implementing new technologies. While this in itself is a tough task, getting on board the experts who are well-versed in those technologies to offer the necessary training is yet another uphill task for companies implementing mission-critical technologies like AI.