In every discussion Advisory expert Greg Gant has with business leaders today, the conversation inevitably leads to business modernization for the Era of AI. What advice is he giving, and when does data first enter the discussion? Find it in this week's episode of Exchanges by Hitachi Solutions.
Key Discussion Points:
Final Notes
In this episode we discuss the rapid pace at which AI is being adopted in the workforce and the critical role of data in leveraging AI capabilities. Greg Gant highlights the importance of preparing and training teams to effectively use AI and data-driven technologies as they become increasingly integral to business operations. To learn more, check out our "Finding Your AI Onramp" webinar now on demand.
global.hitachi-solutions.com
In every discussion Advisory expert Greg Gant has with business leaders today, the conversation inevitably leads to business modernization for the Era of AI. What advice is he giving, and when does data first enter the discussion? Find it in this week's episode of Exchanges by Hitachi Solutions.
Key Discussion Points:
Final Notes
In this episode we discuss the rapid pace at which AI is being adopted in the workforce and the critical role of data in leveraging AI capabilities. Greg Gant highlights the importance of preparing and training teams to effectively use AI and data-driven technologies as they become increasingly integral to business operations. To learn more, check out our "Finding Your AI Onramp" webinar now on demand.
global.hitachi-solutions.com
All AI Roads Begin with Your Data Estate
February 26, 2024
30m 18s
Laurel Greszler
Welcome to Exchanges, a podcast by Hitachi Solutions where we discuss all things business with our experts. I'm Laurel Gressler, producer of exchanges and marketing manager for Hitachi Solutions, and today I'm hoping I can make Dave Hornstein proud. And maybe mimic the smooth stylings of his delivery while he's out on paternity leave. Congratulations to the Horsteins!
Quick shout out there. So in order to do that in a way I you know how I'm stepping back into my reporting roots and delivering sort of a man on the street about data and AI today. To do that, I'm here with VP of Business advisory for Hitachi Solutions, Greg Gant.
Greg, you've been instrumental in leading the charge with our customers, helping them prioritize and initiate what makes sense for their business through all of this type. Hi.
Greg Gant
Hi, Laurel.
Thanks for having me on.
And uh, I could not agree with you more.
First things first, congratulations to the horse Stein tribe.
They've added a kiddo over the last week and we couldn't be happier for him.
Everything is healthy and happy and actually talk to Dave this morning and they seem super stoked.
So congratulations, Dave and team.
Laurel Greszler
Well, that's awesome.
Yeah.
And I think he he did his last podcast with you on his way out the door to to the delivery room.
Just about so.
Greg Gant
Yeah, that's right.
Laurel Greszler
So Greg, recently we offered a webinar, first live and now on demand with some of our experts including you from low code data science and innovation.
And we did that for executives to hopefully help them focus on finding their door or what we called their on ramp to AI and and delivering not only information but hands on use cases.
And if we pick up that conversation today on the topic of your AI discussions with business leaders and how many, if not most of them, come down to finding, fixing and updating your term, then the next Charter to that discussion may lead us then to unpack those on ramps with data.
Laurel Greszler
Is that right?
Where are we today?
Greg Gant
Yeah, yeah, I agreed.
And data is at the center of everything when it comes to AI generative AI, all of the surrounding technologies that we're seeing with copilot assisted decision making, virtual assistants invisible CRM, you name it it.
It's what it Matthew McConaughey say, right?
It's our. It's the new gold. It it is, it's everything right now.
Laurel Greszler
That's funny.
You said that about Matthew McConaughey because the last thing I heard him talking about was tequila.
Greg Gant
Yeah.
Laurel Greszler
So that guy gets around.
Greg Gant
You.
Yeah, that's right.
Laurel Greszler
So yeah, In Forrester's 2024 AI prediction sort of summation— I think you've heard this, but according to Forrester, 60% of workers will regularly use generative AI by 2024 and and then it just it's sort of follows up and reinforces that when they asked employees to kind of sometimes ignore or go around their organization, security policies on AI, why they're most frequent response was it's the most efficient way of doing what I need to get done.
Laurel Greszler
And I have to I have to echo that I I very quickly went from ohh hesitancy and and a little bit of I guess fear to wow my best assistant every day.
So if we start there in a way, I imagine these predictions can be a bit daunting for business leaders to take in a meaningful way for their enterprise while they're simultaneously juggling their priorities and answering to their customers, not to mention their board and their bottom line.
And you're on the road sort of right now having these conversations, can you? So where where is everybody on this today? Because I know you've delivered that news before, but it's such a fast-moving train.
Greg Gant
Yeah, it's really interesting and that that gardener report is not only is it dead on, but it highlights something we're seeing in the space.
And I was with appear at a client.
A customer of ours at north of the border in Canada.
A couple weeks ago and and pick the executive team there had the opinion that generative AI today and this isn't incorrect.
By the way, their opinion was generative.
AI, still a bag of tricks.
It's writing haikus.
It's chat, GPT, you know, scrubbing my word docs for me and making them sound a little bit better and proofreading.
Maybe it's doing some research.
For me etcetera.
And when we started talking about hey, you know, let's help you think about some use cases and and their executive team, which I think I mentioned on the webinar was asking us to say and question every executive team seems to be asking right now.
Give me all your use cases.
Tell me everything generative AI can do.
I want to know what every other customer is doing and and we wanna go copy that and.
But this team was a little different, they said.
You know, we're we're not ready yet.
We don't buy into all this stuff.
We're not quite sure we're gonna let it play out a little bit.
We're gonna explore some things for now.
We've turned it off, they said.
We sort of turned off some of the chat GPT stuff.
We wrote an acceptable use policy and we've kind of locked some things down for the time being.
First out of security reasons, data governance and compliance should be top of everyone's mind right now and in the room.
My peer, who I will leave nameless to protect you, understand, asked the harmless question to the room full of folks and said hey, hearing that even knowing those things, who here in this room is using chat, GPT, the bag of trinkets everyone in the room raised their hand.
Greg Gant
Really.
Really.
Who's using it to do their job?
Day to day, like just to be faster at their day to day tasks, everyone raised their hand even though they've already blocked it on their computer.
Turns out people are using it on their phones.
They're using it on their personal computers.
They're iPads.
It just is out there to your point exactly.
Greg Gant
The IT just helps them do their job faster, more efficient, potentially better.
And folks are going to find a way to to do that where they can.
And so it's really interesting, I guess in summary, what you're seeing is this sort of crossroad or this intersection of control and what is this?
And we need to think through it and how do we use it?
How do we deploy it?
How do we sort of wrap our arms around it to the workforce, modernizing, finding creative ways and understanding that there is real power and generative AI?
There's real efficiency to be had.
There's value to be created, realized and captured in the workforce, and it's a phenomenon that we've never seen like this so quickly where the individual is driving it right.
That's you.
Look at.
I'll just tell one other anecdote here because we're seeing this in our biz apps world.
This concept of invisible CRM where for decades I've been implementing anemic systems for almost 20 years and are constant battle our uphill battle that we've had has rarely been can we build workflows?
Greg Gant
Can we write reports?
Those are things that take time, but the place where we have battled is getting people to use the systems, right, adoption change management training, making it effective to where they want to use CRM.
Well, you look at things like copilot, yeah, copilot generative AI.
Laurel Greszler
Yeah, it's hard.
Greg Gant
Shoot even some of the things we're seeing with copilot and M365 with teams and outlook.
Well, now you have the users asking for copilot so that they don't have to use dynamics because they can use dynamics right inside of teams or right in their outlook like they've never been able to do before.
And so we're just seeing a real interesting paradigm shift where the user experience is being pushed onto the users control.
They can now say this is something that I want to use because it makes me better, faster, more efficient rather than I've gotta go into this biz app.
I have to go into this report.
I have to go into this thing, so it's.
It's really interesting, really fascinating stuff.
Laurel Greszler
Yes. So that makes sense. For some, it's really the employees pushing the envelop, saying admitting that they're using it. And then saying, you know, you could too. We could all use it. Let's figure out a way.
But and I took this, Fred Heller said this during the webinar we referenced.
He said, you know, Copilot, and in these large language models just help you have a better day at work.
Greg Gant
Yep.
Laurel Greszler 1
And I took boy, I took that.
And because that just hit home for me and and put it all in a nutshell.
Well, so saying all that and listening to the webinar myself and listening to everyone speak about the journey that business leaders are taking to get their enterprise ready for AI and I'm going to date myself here.
Greg Gant
Yep.
Laurel Greszler
But it I keep thinking about the bill sitting on Capitol Hill and here's why, you know, "I'm just a bill." I think about a I think about a piece of data sitting on the front steps of any, you know, business world over today, just waiting to be picked up and carried inside and and used better.
Greg Gant
Yep.
Laurel Greszler
That's what's in my head all the time.
When I hear you all talking about getting ready to enable business initiatives and so the prioritization leads often to the last part of your sentence being and you have to start with your data.
And so in your discussions out in the field, how fast does that come up?
Sorry, prioritizing data modernization. How fast does that enter the conversation with business decision makers and leaders?
Greg Gant
It's it's really interesting and I'll try to keep this out of sort of business speak level. I'm not the most qualified to get super technical, but where I'm seeing kind of three presses.
Number one, I don't know if we've seen a more aggressive press for data quality and integrity over the last 18 to 24 months than we've ever seen before, right, because now I think more so than ever it used to be all about, hey, we need better reporting.
We need better real time insights into our business.
We need better forecasting.
You know, I would call these level one and level 2 style reports where you're trying to get a pulse of what the business is doing today, what it did yesterday, what it may do tomorrow, but it was all about you need the data, you need the data in a system and it needs to be transaction enough friendly that you can get those kind of insights.
What we're seeing now is with the rapid business adoption and generative and all those surrounding AI technologies we've been talking about, there should be a little powered by data sticker on all those things.
And so every business executive right now is realizing 2 days data work.
Feeds the AI work six 1218 months from now, and so every meeting I'm in every implementation, whether they're putting in a new CRM system, a new data state, a new finance and operations, ERP implementation doesn't matter.
It all begins with data of so that two years from now they can have a fully AI enabled platformed estate, right that that is he number one.
I mean, and we're seeing it like I've never seen it before and it's it's really cool to see.
I I've.
I've never been in so many meetings where we've got the leader of a chief or, you know, the Chief Data officer or the leader of a business intelligence team in the.
Procurement process of an RFP for a large ERP implementation, right?
That's cool stuff, because they're realizing those things aren't separate anymore.
Laurel Greszler
Yeah.
Greg Gant
Very, very cool.
Which leads me to my second big press around the democratization of that data. And it's not just about having it or having good quality.
It's about ensuring that it's available to the right systems, the right people, the right buses, right.
And you look at some of the things that Microsoft is doing and I I get amazed when I spend any amount of time with our talent here at Itachi.
I just got exposed to some of the things we're doing with Microsoft Fabric.
For example, there's been some fantastic webinars and podcasts and all sorts of things, and the more I sit with that team and see what they're capable of, you talk about democratization of data and getting it to a place that AI is in is in a position to enable that data to enable the AI and the generative AI capabilities.
This is now going to become the investment point. This is my belief.
So put an asterisk gonna footnote on that.
My belief is over the next three years the investment points will be the platforms and the tools needed to democratize the data like fabric, like the surrounding technologies to bring that data into a position where you can put it to work.
And it's it's amazing to see because now when we go talk to a customer where we used to have a conversation and say, hey, that's a dynamics CRM project or that's a data lake project.
Now we say that's a transformation project and it has a little bit of dynamic CRM or CE. Pardon me, it's got a little bit of Microsoft Fabric.
There's probably some data like stuff going on there, and then we're we might wanna wheel in some of our own empower so we can move that data around.
Next thing you know, you've got an intelligent Salesforce automation platform that two years from now can be completely AI enabled.
Who knows what that space is gonna look like.
So you it's all about thinking about the data today, making it available so that we can do that tomorrow.
The third press Laurel on that just kind of to close up that topic to me is I'm making a big bet around the people side of these concepts, right, because I still believe and and you know, if you go on LinkedIn, you might all of a sudden find yourself in a minority on this thought process.
Greg Gant
But I still believe that the individuals, the talent, the users, the humans that understand how to leverage these technologies in their business applications, in their workflows, in their day-to-day job processes will be the key to the modern workforce, not AI is going to replace the workforce, right?
We're not going to allow in the near term AI to begin making human decisions for us fully.
We're just not.
We're not seeing that we need to have humans in the loop, and so how do we make sure that we're reading creating all of the change enablement functions we need within our workforce and that includes everything from responsible and ethical AI and generative AI all the way through embracing, enabling and empowering our workforce to leverage the concepts of generative AI to take advantage of the democratized data state that's got all the quality things we talked about in the first press.
So those three things to me kind of fit together, that's where we're seeing a ton of interest and investment from the, a lot of the customers and and the executives that I'm sitting with recently.
Laurel Greszler
That's interesting and in just to tie that all together, cause I've been, I've sat in on our training for Fabric with our experts.
And the interesting thing about the people in the process is these aren't being populated by just one person from a company whose interested they've been populated by entire teams of of, you know, IT coming in to, you know, who might be power BI fluent.
And they're coming in to figure out what that next step is to get their data ready for what they want it and need it to be.
So it it's played out in in the sessions that we've delivered today for sure.
Well, Greg, so in to follow up on the AI on ramp webinar that we did, we have a few things coming our way that folks might wanna check out the original webinar is out on demand.
So that's available for everyone whenever they seek it out.
And we've not only that, but we've compiled some of what was delivered in that webinar and expanded on that information in an ebook that's about to be published.
If you like to read your information versus listen and into it, and we're working to deliver some of what you just sort of formant shadowed and and deliver direction on data and modernizing your data state on how to get that to a place where you're comfortable leveraging AI in an upcoming webinar as well.
So stay tuned for that.
Well, so as you're on the road traveling and talking to customers, any last thoughts before we close our conversation today?
Greg Gant
Yeah, maybe maybe three things and I'll run.
It's always three things I guess, but I'll I'll wrap on these pieces.
If if you had this summarized kind of what we're hearing and the changes got, it's changing and evolving so quickly.
I mean, six months ago, if you ask me for the three things, it was probably all about use cases, the same conversations that I'm shunning at now and like I don't ask me that we're better than that now.
Six months ago, I've said let's talk about use cases.
Laurel Greszler
And now it's amazing, yeah.
Greg Gant
And so now to me, here's what we know.
You know, AI is gonna be a driver of transformation period where we're seeing it whether you know you look at the copilot stack and tell you take away the fun that of the Super Bowl commercials, the brass tacks is I think there's over 50 copies.
Let's now in the Microsoft ecosystem.
Uh, they'll probably be double that over the next six months.
T
They're investing and equipping every single application in the Microsoft ecosystem with AI copilot, generative AI.
Period, and Microsoft expects that to be a transformative initiative across the board.
And it's here. It's here I'm using it.
Our customers are using it.
I had a CFO of a health insurance company, Ping Me on teams last week and asked if I could sit with him for a minute to show him how to use some of that cool teams copilot stuff I was telling them about at dinner the other night.
And so it's here. That's real and we're seeing it and it's amazing.
Data is still the key. Copilot is amazing, but you gotta have your data.
Gotta have the data, the principles we talked about, and then I think that third one is all around balance your innovation with that, that human factor and ensuring that you've got the people side. Because if you're building the most amazing things but people aren't using it, it's just not going to create and realize the value that you thought it may have or deliver on the promises that you might have built a business case or a tentative business case around it early on in the discovery process.
So those are the big ones to me and I think you know, as we continue to see this involve what I'm talking about now and and six, 912 months probably will be table stakes you with those are just going to be the new ways that we implement and deliver software.
But where we are today, understanding that it is a key business driver, it is a key transformation piece, understanding that it starts with data and then thinking about the people side up front to make sure we understand the business value.
Those are good places to start, to say the least.
Laurel Greszler
Yeah, that certainly brings to a fine point. The phrase digital transformation.
While folks might be wary of it, it has come back in a very strong and heated way because you have to transform to be able to keep up with the pace of all of this innovation in the past year.
Well, Greg, as always, thank you for joining me and and and allowing me to interview you today in my street speak and as always to our listeners.
Thank you for tuning in to exchanges with Hitachi Solutions.
If you'd like to check out our full library of thought leadership podcasts, you can find them and more at global.hitachisolutions.com or really wherever you get your favorite podcast.
Thanks for your time today, Greg.
Do you think Dave will give me at least an A for effort?
###