I'm Manveen Rana here at Davos 2024, and I'm joined by Vlad
Lukic, who is the Global Lead on Tech and Digital Advantage.
Vlad, welcome.
Thanks for joining us.
Everybody here is talking about AI this year.
As you know, we have for many years, but this year in
particular, it feels like everything is changing. For you,
how much are you seeing companies and leaders taking on
that change?
And for you, are there surprises about how well or how badly
they're doing?
Yeah, it's hard to like,
it's too soon to judge, right.
I like to say that we are really in the early stages of AI.
It's been developed.
It has been developed for the last 50 plus years.
So it's continuation.
But now we're entering the exponential phase of deploying
it right, and deploying it at scale.
Last year we talked about GenAI
and there was a magic moment of like, whoa, is this real?
Can it really be doing the things that it seems to be
doing?
What about hallucinations, etc.
This year it has shifted and a lot of companies have tested it.
They said, OK, it actually works when deployed in the right way,
but how do I scale this up, how do I take it to the everyone in
the organization, etc.
As a result, it is in the budgets for '24 for 90% plus
companies.
So it's happening.
Now, only 10% of them or so are actually deploying it
efficiently.
So they're trying to figure out how do I scale this up, how do I
get enough employees to learn how to use it, how to put the
right guardrails in place, etc.
So it's just a different flavor of the conversation as it's
progressing.
And are you seeing the leaders who are having to have those
conversations, having to work out what to do?
Are they making common mistakes?
Are they getting this right?
I'm sure yes.
There's both common mistakes, but also things that they're
doing well, right?
And the key thing for me is that the ones that are doing it right
are genuinely geeking out about it.
They're figuring out what it is.
They're spending time to get their hands dirty, to learn what
it is, right?
Yeah.
And to stay close to it, right.
The ones that are not doing well are the ones who outsource it,
who say three layers in the organization, you go figure out
this AI thing, or they think about it as a project.
So we'll just do it for six months, then we're done, right?
So it needs focus, it needs the dedication, and it needs folks
to stay close to it to try things.
And then the last thing, the ones that do it well, they don't
think about deploying it in a little segment.
They're thinking of rethinking the whole workflow end-to-end,
right.
And the ones that think about just how do I, we have a number
of examples where you deploy some of the AI, it extracts a
lot of efficiencies in a specific workflow, but that
workflow is not a bottleneck.
It's not a bottleneck for the full process.
So therefore there is no value in doing it.
So Vlad, you described how we're now hitting that moment of
exponential change where everything is changing
incredibly quickly.
Are there aspects that you see coming that you think people
aren't really focusing enough on?
There is...yes and no.
No because a lot of it is transparent.
We're seeing what's coming out, right.
But I do think there are a few interesting aspects on the pure
technical side.
One is that a lot of software companies are going to be
seamlessly embedding a lot of the GenAI
and more broadly, AI features into their offerings.
So, a lot of the things that we are even building with our
clients, I think six to eight months will be obsolete because
it will be part of, it will be a feature somewhere else.
So managing expectations around that, and getting ready for
that, and focusing more on deploying is going to be one of
the new capabilities companies need to build.
Some of them will be disappointed because they will
say, oh, I just spent all this money building it, that is OK
because you build the muscle of what does it take to test it,
what does it take to deploy it?
Well, how do you change the workflows around it, so it's not
wasted, right.
So it's useful.
It's the muscle that is being built so that you learn how to
deploy it.
So that's kind of one thing that is going to be a surprise.
The second one is that the companies that will unlock the
value will be the ones that are rethinking workflows end-to-end
and reshaping them.
But then be surgical about where do they put some of the AI
features within it.
Some of it they will develop, some of it will be what they
buy, but it will be around the reengineering of the whole
workflow.
So those are not necessarily purely technical insights, but
those are the things that are usually blind spots for a lot of
my clients.
Yeah.
And you talked earlier about the ones who are getting it right,
the ones who are doing it well by being quite geeky and getting
very involved.
Just give us a sense of what that looks like.
Give us an example of where that works really well.
The Executive Team knows enough about the technology so that the
conversation they're having, you and I, if you were on that
Executive Team, we're talking about where is the friction in
the process, where is the friction in the customer
experience?
Great.
So this is the bottom line.
How do we now, given that, let's think now how do we deploy the
technology. When it's not, when they're not geeking out on it,
when they don't know enough,
the conversations are very much of the likes of, is this real,
are you sure, how much is it going to cost?
Should we buy, should we build it?
And so they don't spend any time thinking about really where the
value creation will happen or where the frictions are.
So that's a simple aggregated difference between those that
are leaning in versus not, and then the ones to take it one
click further, the ones that engage into the deployment of
this, they test it.
They're the ones that in the Executive Team, they want to not
just see the demo, but they want to actually see what will their
Sales Rep see
if they're using this tool, they will have a point of view how to
refine it.
So they're getting involved into the development of some of these
tools and having a point of view on it.
And I suppose as they do that, they see more opportunities.
Then they say great, where are you getting the data for this
from that?
Are you guys sure that's accurate data?
Did we clear all the privacy policies, etc. So they can
actually start steering you as a developer towards answering a
lot of the critical questions around the design of the
solution etc.
But as you say, a lot of companies aren't leaning in,
they're sort of hoping somebody will tell them about the change
that's coming.
Correct.
Are there some industries really that you think don't see how
they're entirely about to change at the moment.
They haven't sort of seen, they haven't started to adapt.
Yeah, so fascinating insight for me over the last 12 months was
that there is no one sector, one industry that is ahead than the
others.
What I'm finding is that in every single one of them you
have few folks that are so far ahead, like leaning in and truly
both disrupting themselves but figuring out how to deploy this,
and then some that are just observing, right.
And so it was lesser on that
it's clustered in few industries, it's across the
board.
So just last week I had back-to-back meetings, one with
an agricultural manufacturer of seeds, the other one was with
agricultural equipment.
Then it was a telecom company, then it was an insurance
company, then it was a bank, then it was a manufacturer of
like building materials. Back-to-back-to-back with
companies that are doing really cool stuff.
So it's not just one sector, it's actually proliferated
across, which is very interesting to me.
Well, that's a vision of the future that's coming.
It's coming our way.
It's coming fast.
Thanks very much for joining us, Vlad.
That's Vlad Lukic, who is the Global Leader of Tech and
Digital Advantage.
And I'm Manveen Rana.