What Drives Business AI Success? People More Than Tech

The decisions people make are the key inputs to business AI output. Choose wisely.

Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) certainly hold the promise of tremendous progress for nearly every aspect of human activity. And the changes are coming quickly, inspiring awe and fear for what may come next—as would be expected in an age of industrial/technological revolution.

How people work will evolve, assisted by AI. Some industries and jobs will be eliminated; in their place, others will emerge. It is the nature of creative destruction, and on the whole the eventual results to society should be beneficial. Of course that does not mitigate individual pain for some.

(When elevators became self-service, human elevator operators became obsolete. But then elevators became less expensive to deploy, they proliferated, and created the need for a new wave of elevator technicians—not to mention the increase in efficiency and productivity for the public at large.)

However, some fear the changes may become too rapid and widespread, decimating the need for human work nearly altogether. Or worst case, humans themselves. Let’s hope that our own self-interest will not allow that outcome.

The Human Element of Business AI

The current process of generating business AI seems to require a primary human element to drive the process and its components. Very simply stated:

• AI Tech Stack — People are required to select the hardware, software and algorithms that make up the stack. It must be built, assembled, tested, managed, governed, revised, and maintained. Then people need to make the correct prompts to properly use the stack. These are human decisions that must be made, ongoing over time.
• Data Sources — More human decisions: What to use, and what to not use. Data must be collected, compiled, assured for quality, managed, governed, revised, and maintained. This too is a function that is never fully completed.

 Of course, the key is making good decisions, the right decisions, to fulfill the promise of business AI. And this should allow the human element to remain front and center throughout.

High-Quality Data Is Required for Successful Business Outcomes

To be sure, a poorly constructed AI tech stack will create highly negative outcomes. The good news is that there are an overwhelming number of options available in the marketplace to help your business try to get it right. You are not alone.

But your data is YOUR data. It is not like anyone else’s data. The best or most expensive AI tech stack in the world will fail spectacularly if you feed it poor quality data. Ultimately, the primary responsibility of having high-quality business data is yours.

Businesses that decide to use the Salesforce^® and Agentforce^® platform have built-in advantages when it comes to the AI tech stack and a repository for data. But more work must be done on the data side.

Using Salesforce App Data Quality Helper Is a Wise Decision

Optimizing the use of Salesforce and AI is the responsibility of a number of the business’s IT stakeholders, first and foremost the Salesforce Admin. In Salesforce, default data quality tools are limited, so it is likely the Admin will make the decision to find additional solutions to elevate data quality.

The easy-to-use functionality of the free app Data Quality Helper offers various ways improve the quality of existing data and future data creation:

• Duplicate record detection and resolution
• Flexible enhanced validation rules
• Storage and deletion rules

Using this app will result in a better data set that will optimize the ROI of using Salesforce generally and produce successful outcomes for AI specifically. And there’s even more good news: The way the app works doesn’t leave the full responsibility for data cleanup resting solely with the Admin. Salesforce users are empowered to fix data issues—after all, they are the ones closest to the data, so they are the ones best suited to make the necessary decisions about quality resolution.

With better quality data, your business can:

• Create effective business strategy at the executive level
• Efficiently manage internal operations and data
• Productively work with external customers and stakeholders

Take a deeper dive and learn more about Data Quality Helper. Then go to the Salesforce AppExchange to install your free version today and get some hands-on experience.