Artificial intelligence has arrived, according to a recent survey by ServiceNow. According to their data, nearly 90 percent of the 500 CIOs they surveyed across 11 countries and 25 industries are at least dabbling with machine learning, with 53 percent calling it an area of strategic focus for their companies. Most poignant within the survey is that 70% of CIOs surveyed say decisions made by machines will soon be more accurate than those made by humans.
Further conclusions drawn by the survey show that CIOs are in charge of digital transformation. The survey also showed that just under 75 percent say they lead their company’s efforts to gear up for full-fledged digital business. With machine learning coming to fruition as the center of these efforts, CIOs have tremendous power to transform the direction of where their organizations are heading.
However, not all organizations have jumped into machine learning yet with just one-third having invested heavily, making up for 5% of overall IT budget. That said, the landscape will be much different within three years, when two-thirds of the respondents expect to be making an investment in machine learning.
What This Means For You
As organizations shed their monolithic architectures for agile processes, several challenges in machine learning are top of mind, including the acquisition of the right skillsets and procurement of helpful business data. With data in particular siloed across many organizations in the status quo, accessing all the right data for the best decision-making is not always easy or possible. Thus, solving the access challenge first is a primary goal before machine learning investment.
Additionally, if machine learning is currently one of your organization’s investments, you’re considered an early adopter. With 10% of survey respondents considered early adopters, their priorities include finding the right talent, improving business processes, and developing roadmaps for best practices and Centers of Excellence (CoE). Additionally, 90% of these respondents expect these strategic decisions to drive eventual revenue growth, signaling a shift in priorities.
In short, the new paradigm of machine learning is on its way. As the survey concludes, its authors provide several key suggestions for any organization seeking to make machine learning an eventual priority. They include:
- Developing a solid technical foundation to improve data quality. If your organization has invested in analytics, that’s already a great start.
- Prioritizing automation in key business use cases.
- Developing a customer experience that will be in-line with eventual machine learning investments. Customers don’t want to see a disconnect between the two areas.
- Attracting the appropriate talent.
- Developing a measurement tool for success.
Closing Thoughts
At Perficient, we’ve begun working on digital transformation projects around machine learning in recent months and would love to share some of our ideas with you. If automation and increased customer experience are elements of your organization that you’d like to develop, reach out to us at sales@perficient.com to talk to one of our experts.
With digital transformation trends driving industry change, technology executives must stay abreast to lead their organizations. Every week, we’ll be covering a trend that matters. Stay tuned for most posts.
