Wondering when and how your enterprise should start taking advantage of the power and potential of Artificial Intelligence? 

If you answered in the affirmative, you're far from alone. Since November 2022, when OpenAI's Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, better known as ChatGPT, was unveiled to the world, AI has been a top of agenda item for Australian business leaders around the country. 

One of the fastest growing apps in history, OpenAI's latest iteration, GPT-4, is seriously smart – capable of passing the US Bar Exam at the front of the class – and its 'prowess' has been the catalyst for countless conversations about how this rapidly evolving technology might be harnessed for commercial purposes.

The AI revolution that's already occurring 

The good news for many decision-makers is that they won't necessarily have to invest time and energy identifying use cases for AI within their enterprises. 

In many instances, they're already using it by default, courtesy of the fact that application and hardware vendors are incorporating it into their products at speed.

If your team is using a digital solution to generate transcripts of virtual meetings or deploying tech support chatbots, for example, chances are those applications are reliant on AI technology. 

It's a trend that's expected to run and run as IT vendors of all stripes continue to iterate on their AI-powered offerings, using the plethora of data to which they have access to optimise and enhance them.

Getting your users on board

But deploying these ever-more-intelligent applications is one thing. Ensuring your employees are using them effectively or, indeed, using them at all is quite another. 

Large enterprises today have 211 different apps in their tech stacks, on average, according to Okta's Businesses at Work Report 2023. 

Many of these solutions were deployed during the Covid crisis to enable teams to collaborate and communicate more effectively, irrespective of their physical locations.

Whichever way you cut it, it's a whole lot of software and, in many instances, a whole lot of hassle for the hapless employees who are required to get their heads around it and utilise all of these technologies on a daily basis.

Doing away with digital friction

Very often, they struggle to do so. In today's times, 'digital friction' between applications which perform similar functions is a very real issue.

So is the technology fatigue that ensues when employees are required to familiarise themselves with multiple applications that promise to boost their productivity and performance. 

Software paralysis is very often the result – a state which sees individuals actively avoiding, rather than embracing, the new solutions that have been implemented, contributing to negative effects on productivity. Typically, they'll revert to legacy processes and practices or employ less-than-efficient workarounds.

That's bad news for businesses that hope to capitalise on the AI functionality that's being built into those new programs and platforms. 

Harness AI with Digital Adoption Technology

Fortunately, there is a way forward. 

A Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) sits on top of an organisation's tech stack, providing customised user guidance and automation while presenting actionable data insights to continuously improve productivity and user experience while maximising the impact of software investments. DAPs keep track of how and when employees use applications and enable you to identify specific pain points in the user experience or workflows that are impeding productivity.  

For example, it might detect that employees are spending inordinate amounts of time attempting to update data within a complex finance platform and introducing errors in the process.

Armed with that knowledge, your organisation might choose to use the DAP to simplify the user journey by adding real-time, on-screen guidance or automation for employees as they interact with the finance platform. 

A better user experience and increased uptake of the new software are likely to ensue.

Rinse and repeat across your organisation's complete suite of critical business applications, and optimal usage of AI-powered features and functionality is likely to be the result. 

DAPs also provide a critical layer of protection for organisations and employees alike in the face of the growing trend of shadow AI. Shadow AI refers to the use of new AI technologies, most of which are generative AI, that are not regulated by IT or security teams. Since generative AI can use input data to learn from and subsequently share with future users, employees only sometimes understand safe rules of engagement and, therefore, put themselves and their organisations at risk for data breaches and the loss of company secrets. DAPs can be used to build in guardrails for employees engaging with generative AI applications in the form of company policy pop-ups delivered right on screen in the right context, hiding certain features of applications, or even rerouting employees to safer generative AI alternative applications. 

Most importantly, the right DAP will allow IT teams to truly understand and therefore, safely regulate employees' use of these new technologies so that the many benefits of these new generative AI technologies can be enjoyed without the risks. 

Towards a stronger, smarter future

AI-powered solutions are fast becoming entrenched in the Australian corporate landscape, and businesses that fail to embrace them may struggle to keep pace with more future-focused competitors. 

Utilising DAP technology to optimise the benefits of these intelligent programs and platforms is a smart, sensible move for businesses that are committed to maintaining market share, profitability, and growth.