what are the most pressing concerns Executives and board members have as we head into 2024 why is client retention seemingly harder than ever and are you ready for chat gbt to be riding shotgun on your summer vacation hi I'm Courtney Baker and this is AI know how from knowwell helping you reimagine your business in the AI era as always I'm joined by knowwell CEO David DeWolf Chief strategy officer Pete buer and chief product officer Mohan Ralph we also have a discussion with ingred Curtis president of spark about how her organization is already seeing AI being used in new and innovative ways in the areas of healthc care Financial Services transportation and more but first the [Music] news Pete buer joins us as always to break down some of the latest AI headlines and how they apply to your business hey Pete hi Courtney how are you I'm doing good so our first story this week Pete Google is said to be considering laying off 30,000 people due to operational efficiency gains in their ad sales placement the story first broke in the information and has been picked up by a ton of different news networks Pete what do you think about this news Courtney my my sense on this one is that it's a big deal there's so much going on this headline my first reaction was holy crap 30,000 people that's a ton of people but then I got to think well shoot Google's a big company right may maybe proportionately it isn't all that huge no Google's 180,000 people so my second reaction was holy crap that's a ton of people on the one hand it's reinforcement of um our belief of just how powerful a AI can be and rewriting the rules of business advertising is a core you know business for Google and uh this move will totally um change the economics of that business uh for Google what I'm surprised I'm not seeing more of in the commentary is some messaging from Google on how the people who are affected will be handled 30,000 is a ton and um there's like I craw through a bunch of other articles and there's some evidence that 30,000 is just the affected group and maybe they won't all be laid off maybe some will maybe new jobs will be created maybe there'll be some restructuring you know that that that's moves as opposed to layos but that will all be at the margin in the main this is going to be a big uh staff action um and I want to read how Google's taking the plight of the individual to heart you know and and stewarding talent to um the next stage on their journey and I'm just not seeing that that's not to say it's not happening behind closed doors and you hope that it is because I think at the end of the day uh shareholder value creation will be a function yes of creating businesses that are effective and efficient but also making sure you've got workforces that are engaged uh and deployed against the highest value activities um and so I think it's you know 1 plus 1 equal 3 uh at the end of the day yeah I think this one is a hard one to digest I do think it's worth you know starting to examine when we hear stories like this of how they are engaging how they're doing the things that you're talking about and certainly we can all be the judge of picking up the things that we think are being done well and the things that we want to do better in our businesses so yeah very interesting news out of Google it'll be interesting to see if more comes out all right Pete in an effort to lighten the mood a little bit here buckle up for this one pun intended according to Reuters Volkswagen Vehicles will converse with drivers via chat GPT by mid 2024 this news was announced at the annual Consumer Electronic show in Vegas what's the business angle on this story Pete well this is just one of what will ultimately be many uh examples of the quote unquote mainstreaming of generative AI um in our 2024 predictions episode David um said this is the year that we'd see AI become deeply woven into the fabric of our lives and what do we at least Americans hold closer in our lives in our cars I was told by way of my cartoons uh when I was growing up that we'd be driving flying cars now and so I know there's a couple out there but we're not all kind of uh you know trying to navigate traffic in 3D so it should at least be time that we can give voice commands to crank up the AC or move our seat around a little bit um I think the stuff is totally cool to make it practical if you're a business executive and trying to make sense of the angle on this like step back and recognize uh you know this is a highly regulated um industry this is a big company sure it's got resources but things tend to move pretty slowly in these uh Automotive um manufacturing businesses and if Volkswagen is already getting to Market but I guess in the summer with an application like this uh the agile Middle Market Professional Services Company should should at least have a menu of um experimentation uh lined up and should be plowing forward trying to figure out what's going to come to market the fastest to have the greatest impact yeah I couldn't agree more and I am very excited to be ordering my Volkswagen uh no that's not true but I am excited to have some of this voice technology and AI technology at our you know not at our fingertips at our at voice command at here pretty soon Pete thank you as always love it Courtney talk to you David D wolf and Mohan raal have been spending a lot of time recently on a listening tour with other Executives they've been talking with seite leaders at companies of all shapes and sizes to find out what some of their biggest challenges are and where AI can help David Mohan Hi how are you oh doing great Happy New Year I guess we can still say that I know we've been back but you know it still feels it borderline New Year Mohan you doing good I am doing great how are you how is Holiday Good wonderful thank you for asking this year as we're we're getting into 2024 we've talked about opportunities we've talked about threats I would like on behalf of the audience to actually get inside of some of the boardrooms some of the discussions that are happening at the highest level of or organizations and I know that you two have had some access recently to quite a few boardrooms and so I want to throw this out to you and see what have you been learning what are boards struggling with thinking through what are the challenges that are happening practically boots on the ground inside the boardroom recording so that that's a really interesting question because we have we've been spending really the last four months since we started Ed uh the business having conversations with customers and and those conversations are in the boardroom and amongst the SE suite and really listening to what are the pain points that Corporate America is really wrestling with right now and one of the the real caveats that I always put out there whenever I'm doing this type of customer feedback a lot of listening sessions is when we have something like AI it's easy to to interpret the entire world through through that lens and so it's easy to go in looking for um problems to um apply the tool to and I've been very intentional about not doing that the first one is information overload organizations are drowning in data they have way too much information um and candidly leaders don't know how to apply it and use it um and they're swimming in in fact I find it really compelling there's research done by Oracle that backs this up it's not just an anecdote but it says that 91% of leaders say that the access to information and data that they have is actually undermining their decision-making fascinating statistic that backs up what we're hearing and we are hearing that organizations see that as such a problem that they're spending millions of dollars and years of time trying to implement you know modern data Stacks business intelligence Solutions and those types of things yet even when they turn it into great dashboards and insights they're struggling to get leaders to adopt it and turn it into action and drive crisp execution out of it um and and I would say that is the probably the biggest theme that I hear in 98% of organizations is this information age we live in is getting the best of us number two I am hearing over and over again about about customer churn um organizations are really struggling to get their hands around their customers their relationship with their customers and really understanding their state of mind what they're going through not only are organizations experiencing customer churn which you would kind of expect given the volatile economy we've had right but they are surprised by it they're continually caught off guard and that really strikes me in this information age that we have so much information and data yet we don't know what our customers are doing and we can't predict that they're going to leave us never mind what opportunities they have for growth um and and that is striking to me with those two themes I think that over and over again the this information overload concept has come to me and that we're actually not able to use the information and data that we have to drive operations and execution and decisions the final thing is a little bit more nuanced but it is related to that is that the the Gap that I'm seeing is that companies are struggling because they're focused on their managed data and their structured data what I mean by that is Enterprise information that we have traditionally tried to make sense of but the reality is the rich information when you think about this example of customer sentiment and whether they're actually getting value out of your service or your product the rich information is not in some tool somewhere where they answered an NPS survey or they uh you know engaged with your formal support the real information there is in nuanced communication it's an informal information exhaust that exists on the public web or somewhere else in the organization it's not managed it's not structured so it's not even being brought in to the data equation um and so while that one's not spoken I hear the ramifications of it over and over and over again so I I would say those are the three themes that I have seen um number one information overload and a real struggle to turn all the information we have into action number two customer churn trying to get our hands around customer intelligence and how do we really know our customers and number three implicitly the subtle ignoring of the the richest information that we have out there which is in our informal Communications and how we talk to to each other you know that's really uh fascinating in in a way kind of what's happening is businesses have always been run through gut feeli or through rules of thumb uh right so uh when X happens you do y right so that's an instinct as Business Leaders most people have and it's worked for many many many many decades but with this information overload that you're pointing that creates a new uh type of problem here because it just gets cascaded on where the gut field that you had no longer works and it's also a function of scale that's a great Point not only works but even if it did work it's so hard to consume the amount of information that we have right we we have more connections now than we've ever had right think about LinkedIn think about Facebook all of the data points that I have in all of my relationships it's just exploded the number of people I can keep track of and then the information channels have also multiplied as well so it's not just through Linkedin that I communicate with people it's through email and text and slack and Google spaces and I mean just keep go go on and on and on like I I could sit here for 10 minutes listing up the platforms that we speak through and so the multiplication of that information even in a world where that go gut is still relevant you just can't keep up with all of it yeah so on the one hand they already have too much data and yet they're ignoring this other vast amount of data with so you're kind of in the boardroom just it's too much MH currently there's not an answer to that at this moment or is there maybe no I think it's what we're as an industry struggling with right is we all see the power of data and information yet we haven't figured out how to harness it right like we definitely know if you go look at the great businesses out there they're driven by data and analytics and information and you make database decisions yeah yeah yeah that's easy to say it's really hard to do and organizations are having to spend way too much money right now to actually make sense of the information and the data we have and my sense is we've just hit a point where the information scale is too big for our ability to digest as human beings right and so we've got to figure out how to lean on and leverage the machines not just for the creation of data right this data and information has exploded because of all of these iot devices we have out there all these communication channels helping us collect more of it now we have to use it for processing right to actually turn it not from data and information not even to insights the whole world's going to talk about insights I want intelligence right and the difference is the taking you know something interesting but turning it into an ability to act on it and do it telling me what to do don't make me go and figure out how I turn it into something I can do yeah you know a solution here possibly is to decouple prediction meaning taking all of the information that's coming in um and getting that into uh nuggets of uh predictive facts or insights you can call it and decouple that with judgment right so the Judgment can come only from humans right even when we think of AI as uh judgment machines they're not they're really kind of codified uh human judgment that's there in code right but what what machines can really do well is the power of prediction and just enable it for the humans to make better judgment and that is one way to get leverage uh with the problems that you're describing David yeah that's a really good point and and this this concept comes back of inference and what is it why is AI different right what what the AI can do not is not only tell you the right answer for a problem that has one right answer but it can give you solutions for problems that may have multiple right answers right that are options and it can use the probabilistic nature to begin to answer some of those types of things and then I agree with you the the Judgment what it's doing is applying our judgment right judgement is taking those inferences and applying values and principles and beliefs well it can take our values principles and beliefs and help us start to put it together but I think breaking it down and starting to understand those different aspects of how the human mind works and how we make these decisions is a really helpful concept so I want to just recap what you said you said information overload and really adding the like turning those insights into action the customer turn and the growth from that being able to retain our clients and then prioritizing also utilizing all of this Rich natural communication data points within the organization which is such a dichotomy of you know different kind of competing problems in some wayt so you two and Mohan especially like where do we go from here can you give us just is there what's the Hope on the horizon here with these problems that we've seen over and over over again uh in 2023 it really comes down to answering two key questions in terms of what the AI technology can provide for us right so one is around uh if you think about what is AI giving us it is the power of prediction it's a predictive technology it is uh probabilistic predictions that it gives right so that is sort of one answer and the second question to answer is if we could have that technology uh in the Enterprise how would you reimagine your company the business model the business processes and run with it so those are the two questions to answer and there in life the solution to your question for those of you listening I hope this helped you think through not just deploying AI to deploy AI in your organization but really thinking through what are the big problems that you need to solve in your organization what would really move you forward hopefully this was interesting to help you start that thought process David Mohan thanks as always it was fun thanks you said it's fun like actually this was terrible that was [Music] fun if you listened to the show last week you may remember that nwell announced a $2 million precede funding round to build the world's first intelligent Enterprise operating system you'll be hearing more about what we're building on next week's episode but for now you can go to nonew well.com to join the beta wait list go to knoww well.com like right now and join the list ingred Curtis is the president of spark a Professional Services organization that helps companies in healthc care Financial Services construction and more accelerate their digital transformation Journeys this gives her a keen View into how AI is being deployed across a variety of Industries P sat down with ingred to find out where she sees AI making an impact now and in the future ingred hi welcome to the show thank you Pete glad to be here if I could ask to orient our listeners um could you give us a snapshot of uh spark and your role happy to I'm the president at spark we are a digital engineering consultancy and we're designing and building and launching digital applications and products products for Mid and large- siiz companies uh specifically in transportation and Logistics financial services and healthc Care uh we go to market with the US Blended onshore as well as a Nearshore delivery model uh and we've been in business for about 15 years with uh with almost a thousand people and let's let's start um high level and fun on the Doomsday scale the AI doomsday scale as you know we focus on on AI and its implications for business uh where are you on a on the Continuum of oh my gosh going to drive the business in spectacular ways to oh my gosh going to drive the business into the ground I uh I'm a huge fan I'm a huge believer in the acceleration uh potential of AI I think if you look at what has happened in the industry over the last you know really covid pre-co through now there's been an obsession with speed to Market um and I think the opportunity to gain those efficiencies will only drive that uh that end user expectation of even more functionality coming at them even more quickly nice in in what ways as you think about your your customers the the folks that you serve uh in what ways is AI helping them or or for that matter you with speed to Market yeah I mean look I think uh our clients are are um sitting on Treasure troves of data um and they are looking at ways in which they're leveraging all that they already know they're leveraging ways of looking at competitive analysis and other uh data from the industry and thinking about how they can use that to uh to drive their businesses forward and so I think we're seeing not just the opportunities for Gen but also those opportunities for um more broad use in every application um and how they're continuing to uh inform their users bring more value and and drive their businesses forward and I guess in this particular episode of the podcast we're focusing on client retention and particular are are you seeing specific applications uh in the context of what you just described that are driving change in client retention I think if you think about client retention um it is a a formula of uh building trusts being easy to do business with um and really driving high value highly valuable outcomes for our clients and so as you think about how you leverage AI to do that um we're able to Leverage The Brain Trust of Spark versus just the individuals that are on the project so we've built internal AI tools uh that allow our engineers to access um a lot more depth and Frameworks and tools and insights that have been leveraged um across our organization and so I think you know tools like that are positioning us to add that greater value for our clients and then I think you know as we think about um riding alongside our clients in their AI Journey right it's at every board level is talking about Ai and how they're leveraging it and so every organization is looking at their service providers to say how are you helping me in that Journey um and I think that's also an important part of what we're doing doing is is really having that open conversation with clients Beyond gen um and how we can learn and leverage their data and prepare them for that that next uh AI Revolution and I'm so fascinated by the the is it digital engineering was that the right term to to capture the work that you do can you give us without naming names can you give us an example of something that you've built something AI driven that you've built to help customers with their retention you know if you think across the work that we're doing um in the healthcare space I mean there is a lot around the patient experience um and you think of just you know we each have our own struggle with Healthcare and and how we're uh trying to identify ways for our family to be Health healthier and use uh and leverage the resources around us and so there are uh organizations out there that um one particularly that we've worked with in the past that is thinking about how they're leveraging Ai and machine learning and a lot in the space of Driving Access based on your personal DNA and and um profile of which which Cancer Treatments would uh potentially have the highest likely uh positive outcome for you or your loved one and so you know as we're thinking about um the work that we do we're having this Major Impact leveraging Ai and and other tools to uh to the end user to that end patient and talk about the end user like we that's like humanity is the end user not just the customer exactly how inside the customer organization does the conversation go when they're trading off like this concept versus that concept versus this concept and they're trying to get a bead on maybe Roi is the right way to think about it because when we Describe the impact that we just talked about it's not just a bottom line or or Revenue thing right it's it's actually making the world a better place as your helping them to build products are you present at this kind of a conversation and how does it go yeah you know it's interesting I think they're um there's kind of this roller coaster of of understanding and you think about the the hype cycle of of Technology right and there's uh initially security concerns you know fear of how do we access that data how is that legal how are we compliant what ways is that going to uh to you know how do we need to think about this framework um this new framework of working but then I think you start to get to this 50,000 foot view or this you know you kind of looking at the Horizon and thinking about the major impact that it could have exponentially on their business on their outcomes on their impact to society to your point right and so I think people you know you start in the place of there's a lot to think about but then you quickly leap to uh where could this possibly go um and so I see clients that uh they see the operational efficiency right there there's always efficiency you can drive with AI we we all know that y um but they've they have their eye on spending time in that space so we build that expertise and that uh that expertise at the organization level so that we're ready for how do we drive the business forward uh big exponential leaps you you mentioned part of the value that you add is accompanying customers on their AI Journey if it's a journey of a Thousand Miles how does that one go like where are we overall like there's all kinds of data about how you know X percent of jobs are going to be Rewritten by Ai and so forth like is it is it early days are we well on the on the path you know you look at tools like can Tes site and others we've had opportunities like this for decades I think we're um we're finally past the slow moving portion of this journey and now we're into the speed you know the speed event uh and if you think about that speed event we are in the early days um I think one of the challenges that AI has uh you think about generative AI we're seeing great um Leaps and Bounds for our more senior and principal um architect level developers they have years of experience writing every single digit of code right and so um that experience is helping them to leverage gen tools far faster far more effectively than our Junior developers and so not only are we find you know we can talk about uh that 40% efficiency but we also have to talk about how are we educating that next uh round of Engineers that are coming out of college or coming out of boot camps and thinking about prompt engineering and the depth of of expertise from a computer science perspective that they'll need to have to really use these tools as effectively as seniors um and I think we'll get there but that's something that we're really early in the journey on yeah I I remember an earlier podcast we talked about how in in high school right now the game is to figure out how not to let students uh use generative AI as soon as they're done they're gonna have to figure out how to use it and so yeah we've got a ways to go for sure for sure ingred thank you so much it's been a pleasure to meet you and thank you for being here on the show yeah Pete thank you very much for the opportunity and uh have a great [Music] day thanks as always for listening and watching don't forget to leave us a review a FST star rating would be really helpful and we'd really appreciate it if you would share this episode on social media or with other Executives you know before we go we always like to ask one of our AI friends to give their input on the show so hey Bard how you been uh this episode we're talking about the biggest boardroom problems in 2024 and how AI can help so what do you think the talent war of 2024 demands AI allies automate hiring nurture potential and anticipate departures before your Rivals du in a volatile World AI becomes your crystal ball analyzing data to navigate uncertainty and guide bold decisions and now you're in the no thanks as always for listening we'll see you next week with more headlines Roundtable discussions and interviews with AI experts [Music]
