Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

Vipin Jain and Seema Jain discuss the opportunities emerging from artificial intelligence and how cognitive technologies will fundamentally change the way government works. They outline how the US public sector is currently adopting and planning to embrace AI and ML in various applications. They also highlight priorities for federally funded research in the US. To help developers in conceiving and developing AI appli­cations, the authors present an AI adoption frame­work and briefly discuss the categories of AI-branded services available from leading cloud service providers. They finish with a consideration of whether AI is a job creator or a job destroyer.

Hemamalini Kumaran, Prema Sankaran, and Raj Gururajan discuss how AI is transforming the banking sector. They outline how Indian and US banks are using AI to gain significant benefits and offer an enhanced customer experience. The authors examine the key drivers that inspire banks to embrace AI, the challenges involved in implementing it, and what needs to be considered in applying AI to best serve customers.

This article draws your attention to the design, devel­opment, deployment, and refinement of cognitive computing systems (CCSs). While CCSs are deployed in a variety of fields yielding benefits exceeding expectations, there are also major failures. Lack of appreciation for the differences inherent in developing a CCS versus a traditional software system is key to these failures. To assist in developing successful CCSs and to derive benefits from them, the authors offer a set of nine key recommendations based on their examination of over two dozen systems. They conclude that CCSs will be a dominant technol­ogy that will permeate all business operations for the foreseeable future.

Cutter Fellow Steve Andriole presents a brief, multi­faceted overview of AI — “the good, the disruptive, and the scary” — and sets the backdrop for further explor­ation. He outlines some recent advances in and key limitations of AI and explores how AI could disrupt several domains, such as insurance, banking, law, real estate, and education. He then discusses the impact that the deployment of intelligent systems will have on jobs and the profes­sional opportunities that will arise.

We hope the articles in this issue present perspectives and ideas on fulfilling the promise of artificial intelligence and that you’ll find them interesting, insightful, and practical. The articles will help you “imagine the new possible” and inspire and encourage you to harness advances in AI in your domain of interest, addressing any concerns and limitations, for good. 

“The purpose of a system is what it does” — referring to “system” as the company as a whole — means that a company’s statements of intent (“we are an innovative, digital native company”), or even its market analysis or the initiatives it has undertaken, are secondary to what a company actually does.

The industry is ripe for transformation in areas including customer service and marketing, claims management and fraud detection, and underwriting.

This Advisor explores one approach that has been particularly effective in making enterprise architects understand the realities of organizational change in their own context.