AI is as much about people as it is about machines

by Josh Rix

The organisation can sow the seeds of a culture, but it’s the people that cultivate it and allow it to blossom.

For an AI project to produce fantastic results, firms need a blend of engineering, delivery and business skills. The boundaries between data, analytics and technology need to be broken down and the organisation needs to work to develop core capabilities everywhere, across everyone.

Engineering: Software developers, data scientists and cloud engineers will form the backbone of any AI project. These people will breathe life into the organisation, often bringing great experiences and insight from the tech giants or nimble start-ups. People with these capabilities need to be incentivised to join the organisation. Banks can offer interesting, cutting-edge projects, open up the technology that is available to work with and provide a cultural and financial package that rivals the largest tech firms.

Delivery: The importance of a set of strong delivery leads cannot be overstated. A business case will still need to be managed, a plan will need to be adhered to, and stakeholders across the organisation need to be well informed about the aims and progress of the project. Experienced change professionals will be rife across the organisation, but they need to flip from an “old-school” mentality of project delivery to one that embraces and enables agile, digital change.

Business: Artificial Intelligence solutions need to be built from well-analysed, well defined business requirements – for which a subject-matter expert from the business is essential. This is someone who can analyse underlying data, understands the impacted business processes, and who knows the target market for a particular product. The organisation has to allow these ‘Run the Bank’ roles to engage in innovative change projects and suitably reward their performance for doing so.

Most firms will have been on this journey for a number of years, but there is still a heavy reliance on flexible resources rather than building the internal capability required to ingrain expertise within the organisation, and there is an adherence to “old-world” organisational structures and departments.

To truly flourish and excel at AI implementations across the organisation, skills and capabilities need to be developed within and ideally right across the business.

Read our whitepaper “Navigating AI Financial Services” for more information and for the Woodhurst Blueprint© for building Artificial Intelligence capabilities