#NavigatingGenAI Series: Article 4
Creating a structured approach for AI adoption across your organisation
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As generative artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance at a swift pace, organisations must integrate these tools effectively while maintaining control and consistency. This article follows the fourth TechPros.io roundtable on 'Navigating Gen AI Together' and includes insights from B2B marketing leaders on developing a structured approach for AI adoption, addressing concerns about tool proliferation and strategies for cross functional implementation.
Maria Elena Martyak Director of Strategy and Marketing, Doyle Blackfriars
Keith Povey Director of Revenue Marketing, Panaseer
Emily Tippins Chief Marketing Officer, Avantra
Matti Vaininen Head of Marketing (CMO), LeadDesk
Tim Bond CEO & Founder, CogniScale.pro
The AI adoption challenge in organisations
The growth of generative AI tools has created a choice dilemma for organisations. With new solutions emerging constantly, companies struggle to identify which tools offer value and how to integrate them into their operations.
One of the roundtable participants framed the challenge: "We're aware of the many AI and gen AI tools available. Since OpenAI launched the Large Language Model (LLM) market, we've seen hundreds of new gen AI tools emerging weekly, if not daily. It's difficult to keep track of the current rate of development." The challenge lies in creating a cohesive, organisation wide strategy for AI adoption. The same participant noted: "The real challenge is how to build a structured approach for AI adoption and communicate it across the organisation. We need to determine where it's appropriate to use AI tools, it's about finding the right balance and process for specific organisational needs."
This question covers process development, stakeholder communication and appropriate use cases and highlights the need for an intelligent approach to AI integration beyond tool adoption.
The same participant said "Sometimes, we might spend more time searching for the right AI tool than it would take to solve the problem directly. It's important to assess whether using AI is actually more efficient in each case." This observation emphasises the importance of balancing innovation with practicality. Organisations must ensure that their interest in AI doesn't lead to inefficiencies that outweigh the potential benefits.
Establishing a cross functional AI council
Keith Povey, Director of Revenue Marketing at Panaseer with expertise in B2B marketing strategies in the cybersecurity space, suggested an approach: "I would try to put some programmatic structure in place and some definitive timelines. Try and put yourself forward as the lead proponent of gen AI adoption and by all means invite other people to it. Then try and get yourself a centralised working group that's cross functional."
This sentiment was echoed by Maria Elena Martyak, Director of Strategy and Marketing at Doyle Blackfriars with 15 years of leadership experience across global markets. She recommended "creating a working group or task force within the organisation with people who are both experienced enough to make decisions on tools, tooling, new systems, new functions as well as also being the user of these new kinds of systems."
Creating a structured approach for AI adoption
Emily Tippins, Chief Marketing Officer at Avantra with expertise in brand strategy and customer insights, emphasised the importance of focus and clear delineation of responsibilities: "It's crucial to narrow in on what the organisation is actually trying to achieve with AI adoption. There's a risk of trying to implement too much, too soon."
She suggested breaking down the AI adoption process: "Within the organisation, it's beneficial to have distinct roles. For instance, an operational owner of AI adoption, perhaps the COO or someone in operations; IT with a role to vet and check compliance and security; and R&D focusing on customer facing development of AI. This structure helps ensure a more manageable and focused approach to AI integration."
Fostering experimentation and shared learning
To drive adoption and innovation, the participants recommended creating opportunities for experimentation and shared learning across the organisation.
Tim Bond, head of B2B marketing agency Network Sunday recently introduced Gen AI pilot programmes for its clients and emphasised the importance of knowledge sharing through a simple yet effective centralised system: "Implementing a comprehensive prompt library is crucial for organisational learning and efficiency. This doesn't need to be complex; a straightforward Google sheet can serve the purpose. Each function—HR, marketing, sales and others—can contribute their AI use cases, prompts and projects in separate tabs. This approach not only facilitates knowledge transfer but also provides clear visibility into the various automations and platforms being utilised across the organisation."
By maintaining this shared resource, organisations can accelerate AI adoption and ensure consistency in how AI tools are used across different teams.
Implementing AI across departments
Matti Vaininen, Head of Marketing (CMO) at LeadDesk with experience in SaaS marketing and new business development, proposed a solution that addresses the challenge of implementing AI across different departments: "To effectively integrate AI across the organisation, you could create cross border, cross functional units. These units would be responsible for improving communication and collecting data from different departments. This approach helps break down silos and ensures a more cohesive AI strategy."
Matti illustrated this approach with a practical example from his own experience: "We've successfully applied this method to content localisation. Previously, we relied on translation agencies, but we've now updated our process to leverage AI. We use generative AI for translating content and then send the results to our local sales or marketing teams for quality assessment. This not only streamlines our workflow but also ensures that our AI generated content meets local market needs."
Measuring impact and demonstrating value
To justify the investment in AI adoption and refine the approach, most participants emphasised the importance of measuring impact and demonstrating value.
Maria emphasised the importance of a thorough evaluation: "To succeed, the task force should clearly define key use cases and assess their impact on the business. Gaining support from senior management requires presenting a comprehensive impact analysis, a revenue assessment and a risk evaluation."
By focusing on specific use cases, organisations can demonstrate clear return on investment from AI implementations, build confidence in AI tools across the organisation and identify areas for further AI integration.
Conclusion
Developing a structured approach for AI adoption is crucial for organisations looking to capitalise on the power of generative AI while maintaining control and consistency.
By establishing a cross functional AI council, fostering experimentation and knowledge sharing, focusing on measurable outcomes and developing standardised processes, companies can create a cohesive, organisation wide strategy for AI adoption.
Need help with your Marketing AI roadmap? Network Sunday, helps you fast-track your AI marketing journey. Our approach begins with a customised on-site workshop, followed by ongoing support through regularly updated online courses and a library of AI marketing use cases. Our workshops are led by Tim Bond the Founder and CEO of Network Sunday and TechPros.io, and draw on experience from 4,000 C-level interviews and content assets, plus intensive AI experimentation and deployment since March 2023. While we start with content creation, the workshops introduce broader applications of generative AI in marketing. The training focuses primarily on mastering AI-powered content creation for B2B marketing, resulting in increases in content production speed by 4X while maintaining or exceeding quality. Participants gain hands-on skills in prompt engineering and AI-integrated workflows, creating their own AI-assisted content. Post-workshop, participants complete a practical task and access ongoing online courses, ensuring continued learning and application of AI marketing skills.
Contact taryn.breetzke@techpros.io or call +44 (0) 1273 102 811 to discuss a workshop and begin your journey to AI-powered marketing excellence.
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The AI adoption challenge in creative marketing
The rapid advancement of AI technologies has presented many marketing teams with the complex task of effectively incorporating these tools into their creative processes.
While AI promises increased efficiency and expanded capabilities, concerns about job displacement and the potential loss of brand uniqueness persist.
One marketing leader highlighted a common hurdle: "We've used AI on a basic level for ideation and note taking, but we haven't really been able to use it yet successfully for the creative process." This sentiment likely resonates across the industry, where AI adoption is still in its early stages used primarily for tasks such as meeting summarisation, email drafting, blogs and social media posts.
However, the challenge lies not just in the technology itself, but in integrating it into existing workflows and overcoming hesitation from team members. As one participant noted, "In some cases there's also that idea that it's going to take their jobs." This fear can lead to reluctance and hinder the effective integration of AI tools into creative processes.
"We've used AI on a basic level for ideation and note taking, but we haven't really been able to use it yet successfully for the creative process."