Deploying AI to Produce

Real-World Business Value Written by Aleksandar Velkoski, Ph. D.

xecutives are increasingly focused on en- CROSS-FUNCTIONAL COLLABORATION. cross-functional collaboration

hancing artificial intelligence (AI) adop- Start the journey by conven- to accelerate AI adoption. The
tion within their organizations. Accord- ing a cross-functional team. It may Data Science Group (DSG) and
ing to the 2020 Gartner CIO Survey, AI seem like a trivial starting point, the Marketing, Communications
ranked number one on CIOs’ list of top 10 game but for AI innovation to succeed, and Events (MCE) Group recently
changing technologies. Data analytics, which is teams must come together from worked together to identify a
typically discussed within the context of core AI and the beginning and work to break- high-impact business opportunity
supporting technologies, ranked second on the list. down silos if silos exist. In fact, related to increasing member en-
Although increased AI adoption is central to the most digitally advanced com- gagement. To ensure that the pro-
modern organization strategy, organizations con- panies — those successfully de- cess went smoothly, and that dis-
tinue to fail to deliver business value from AI. Of ploying digital technologies and parate needs were met, we openly
the biggest challenges to AI adoption, a lack of use capabilities to improve processes, and honestly discussed everything
cases, as well as an inability to measure or value engage talent across the organi- from technical capabilities and
success, continues to permeate. In addition, there zation and drive new value-gener- limitations to business unit goals
is often misalignment among technologists who ating business models — are far and objectives.
are responsible for AI innovation and business line more likely to perform cross-func- Through our collaboration, we
leaders who are responsible for decision-making. tional collaboration. identified a specific business op-
The misalignment is so predominant that through At the National Association portunity to enhance member
2021 80% of business line leaders are expected to of REALTORS®, we leverage engagement. We agreed that
override AI.
To increase AI adoption, executives should
take tangible steps toward crafting projects that
leverage AI, with a heightened focus on business
implementation. One path commonly traveled, as
described in Figure 1, is to leverage AI to improve
the efficiency and accuracy of human actions and
decision-making.
Given the challenges outlined above, though,
how can we identify prediction problems that trans-
late to real-world business value? The key is to pro-
mote cross-functional collaboration, identify clear
business opportunities that can be transformed into
AI solutions, and implement AI solutions through-
out the business.
increasing attendance at the asso-
ciation’s REALTORS® Conference
& Expo, which is the largest annual
event for real estate professionals,
was a great way to deliver real-world
value. When members attend the
conference and consume confer-
ence educational and networking
opportunities, they’re also more
likely to be engaged and retained,
and that serves as a win-win for
members themselves and the asso-
ciation.
FROM BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES TO AI
SOLUTIONS.
It’s one thing to identify a busi-
ness opportunity, and it’s another
to establish an AI solution. In order
to go from business opportunity to
AI solution, you must have a good
sense of your organization’s AI ca-
pabilities. This is one of the most
important reasons why you need
to establish a cross-functional team,
particularly one that integrates tech-
nology stakeholders as partners in
the process.
In our case, we transformed our
business opportunity into a simple
prediction question; namely, “Who
is likely to attend the REALTORS®
Conference & Expo”. We gathered
a significant amount of data, includ-
ing core member engagement data,
demographic data and behavioral
data, and then we leveraged tech-
niques in AI to build a robust pre-
dictive model. Once the model was
built, it was deployed in production
via an API. Finally, we used the API
to append to each member record
the output of the predictive model,
which was an individualized score
that represented each member’s
likelihood to attend the conference.
Through leveraging our predic-
tive model, the DSG was able to
identify an important segment of
members that not only were likely to
attend the conference, but also had
not attended the conference previ-
ously. The DSG provided the mem-
ber segment, including information
about each member’s unique deci-
sion-making styles,communication
tastes and conversion preferenc-
es, to the MCE Group to develop
a comprehensive strategy for im-
plementation.
BUSINESS IMPLEMENTATION. Value
comes from action. At minimum,
business implementation is about
augmented decision-making; us-
ing insights derived from machine
intelligence to make better ad
hoc decisions. At best, it’s AI at
scale.
In our case, the MCE Group
took the DSG’s findings and
crafted a sophisticated strategy
to encourage members within
the segment to attend the con-
ference. The strategy included a
campaign with personalized mes-
saging that spoke to members’
unique needs and interests. The
MCE Group divided the overall
segment into five distinct catego-
ries, mainly by decision making
styles, communication tastes and
conversion preferences. Then the
team created custom messag-
ing for those groups. Groups in-
cluded personas like Proud to Be
an American Pam, Glory Seeking
Gloria, Discount Deadline Dave,
Rose-Colored Glasses Rosie and
Generic George.
Ultimately our goal was to en-
courage members to attend the
conference. After our campaign
was complete, and the confer-
ence itself had finished, we ob-
served a segment attendance rate
of nearly 1.5% and an increase in
revenue of roughly $100k. That
may not seem significant, but
given the complexity of the call to
action — that is to say it required
that members incur a collection of
direct costs (conference fee, flight
and hotel) and indirect costs (time
commitment and lost business)
— the rate and revenue gain was
significant. This is especially true
given that segment attendance
outperformed almost all others.
Based on this and a variety of
other factors, it was clear that the
effort was successful.
Increasing AI adoption is a for-
midable goal. Although it comes
with its own set of unique chal-
lenges, the rewards can be nota-
ble. Throughout your journey, you
will surely encounter breakdowns
in communication, differences
of opinions and questions about
the true value of the work. Push
through those challenges and stay
on course. Also, remember that
perfection is the enemy of prog-
ress.
Promote cross-functional col-
laboration, identify clear business
opportunities that can be trans-
formed into AI solutions, and im-
plement AI solutions throughout
the business. If you do so, you’ll
be well on your way to generating
real-world business value with AI.
Dr. Aleksandar Velkoski
serves as the director
of Data Science at the
National Association
of REALTORS®. In
addition, he is an
adjunct professor in the College
of Computing and Digital Media at
DePaul University, and co-founder
and organizer emeritus of Chicago
ML, a community of machine
learning scientists. He serves as
a distinguished faculty advisor
and mentor at the Innovation
Development (iD) Lab at DePaul
University, and as a mentor at
Second Century Ventures.