A Blueprint for Success: Unlocking Value with GenAI Implementation

By Rajeev Sethi, ServiceNow

Generative AI (or GenAI) has the power to unlock game-changing new capabilities, boost employee productivity, and deliver value quickly. This is why every enterprise is interested in experimenting with it to achieve their business objectives, while at the same time separating what's hype from reality. Getting started is the tricky part.  

Jumping into any revolutionary technology can feel a bit daunting. With so many platforms, technologies, and capabilities, it's hard to know where or how to begin taking those first steps toward adoption.

Having the right foundation in place allows you to drive results quickly. In our organization, we successfully developed and launched 25 GenAI use cases within a span of just six months, continuously tapping into its potential across key personas and use cases for agents, developers, and employees. Directing these internal initiatives provided a wealth of insights, which are valuable for any technology leader aiming to develop and implement their own GenAI strategies.

Here are some of the most important lessons and takeaways from our first-hand experience with moving from pilot programs into full production mode:

Empower Your People to Participate

An organization's talent is one of its greatest assets, and businesses only stand to gain when they tap into the creativity and expertise of their people. This means bringing employees along for the ride and getting them excited to engage with new technology.

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Encourage employees to explore and engage in hands-on experimentation with GenAI. For engineers and developers, this can be done through initiatives like regular hackathons and innovation labs as a safe platform for showcasing live demos, collaborating, developing new ideas, and serving as a valuable launchpad for future solutions. For less technical employees, consider piloting company-approved tools like GenAI search or text summarization to show how some daily tasks can be simplified to make work easier.

But most importantly, make sure promising initiatives don't just vanish into the ether. Successful projects should be recognized and given support, funding, and dedicated teams and resources. Go from ideas to action by putting the best ideas into production and integrating these initiatives into primary development work streams and product roadmaps.

Get Leadership Buy-in at Every Level

To successfully integrate GenAI into your business, the support and buy-in of senior leadership is essential.

One way to bring executives into the fold is by running enablement programs within the organization and inviting all leaders — regardless of their role and department — to participate, learn, and explore the possibilities of GenAI. Targeted workshops, brainstorming sessions, interactive seminars, and cross-departmental projects can be used to demonstrate how GenAI can be applied within specific contexts of their teams and functions. The goal is that every team, from finance to sales, can understand how their org's unique personas and business needs will benefit.

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Drive Awareness of Internal Innovation

People need to know about new ideas and valuable use cases for them to become real-life solutions. Giving employees opportunities to talk about what GenAI projects they're working on helps drive company-wide awareness of efforts and how they are transforming the business.

This can be achieved by hosting monthly demos and idea sharing sessions to provide employees with a free forum for open communication. Not only do these gatherings ignite problem-solving and creativity, but they also cultivate a culture of innovation and collaboration across the company.

It's also imperative to keep your teams updated on the latest technologies and roadmaps. Leadership should consider regularly sharing metrics and success stories to enhance employees' understanding and application of insights. Is a specific use case resonating with employees and helping increase productivity? What process did they help improve? Is there a certain team where sentiment can be improved? These stories can help illustrate the possibilities for employees or teams that may feel hesitant to get started or use the available tools at a greater scale.

Continuously Measure Outcomes and Solicit Feedback

Lastly, you should have a constant pulse on the impact of GenAI implementation and have measurable goals and outcomes for defining success.

This includes regularly soliciting feedback and sentiment from customers and employees engaging with GenAI tools to measure accuracy and efficacy of the content. Organizations can also measure the rate of adoption, such as how frequently target users are engaging with the GenAI technology being offered. Additionally, leaders can look at how new AI solutions are impacting employee performance including deflection rates of IT tickets that improve time-savings for support teams. 

By tracking outcomes and reactions from the start, enterprises can continue to iterate and improve on GenAI implementations, ensuring its benefits are felt throughout the organization.

A Path for GenAI Success

There's a lot to be gained from harnessing the potential of AI, and every organization should think about a long-term adoption strategy. Unlike other technologies of the past, results can be realized in weeks instead of months or years.

Tapping your talented workforce and valued internal resources to encourage creative thinking and collaboration will get your AI transformation ball rolling. AI and GenAI are not replacing what people do, they're enhancing how we operate — from better user experiences and faster speed of getting work done. The sooner your business puts it to work, the faster you'll unlock its massive potential.

About the author:

Rajeev Sethi is Group VP, Emerging Technology, at ServiceNow.