Harvard Business Review: Is Your Data Infrastructure Ready for AI?

by Apr 30, 2020Press and Awards, Seth Earley

Seth Earley and his book, The AI-Powered Enterprise

This article by Seth Earley, author of The AI-Powered Enterprise, was published on the Harvard Business Review website on April 28, 2020.

Every big company now manages a proliferation of sites, apps, and technology systems for interacting with buyers and managing everything in the business, from customers and clients to inventory and products. These systems are spitting out data continuously. But even after multiple generations of investments and billions of dollars of digital transformations, organizations struggle to use that data to improve customer service, reduce costs, and speed the core processes that pro­vide competitive advantage.

AI was supposed to help with that. But as an executive at a major life insurance company recently told me (Seth), “Every one of our competitors and most of the organizations of our size in other industries have spent at least a few million dollars on failed AI initiatives.” Why?

My 20 years of experience working with companies on their information technology have shown me the reason: because promises of AI vendors don’t pay off unless a company’s data systems are properly prepared for AI. Data is locked in silos, inaccessible, poorly structured, and most importantly, not organized in such a way as to be used as the fuel that makes AI work. Instead, to reap the benefits of AI, companies need to create something called an ontology, a comprehensive characterization of the architecture of all of its data.

All the building blocks of your nonfiction book in one handy reference guide.

Are you writing your book without a Book Plan in place? If so, do yourself a favor and download our Book Plan Template before writing another word! It will guide you through capturing and organizing the 8 critical elements of any nonfiction book. Just subscribe here, and we'll send you the download link.

Head over to your inbox to confirm signup, and you're in.