Five things you need to know about AI

Five things you need to know about AI

Our recent report with Cebr found that AI could unlock £105bn in additional revenue for UK mid-sized firms* by 2030, but where does AI now sit in business priorities and how can you maximise its potential impact? Speaking on a panel discussion at the HSBC Championships, three tech specialists – including two from the world of tennis – shared their insights on the ever-evolving role AI is playing in business growth.

1. The conversation about AI is changing

Like any new technology or development in the world of work, the way we’re viewing and talking about AI is developing all the time.

Matt Hatton is the Head of Digital Transformation and Technology at the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) and compares the rise of AI to the beginning of the internet age.

“I’ve been working in tech transformation and change for 25 years and when I started, we were coming into the internet revolution,” he says.

“AI is another wave of technology-intensive change. There are a lot of differences in the tech itself but similarities in terms of the way it’s dominating conversations, the reservations some people have and how we’re all trying to understand its long-term impact.”

For Roland Emmans, Head of Tech Sector and Growth Lending at HSBC UK, the conversation around AI is moving at pace:

“AI has moved from future-gazing to implementation. The focus today is on real business outcomes and value delivery,” he says.

“Last year, the question was: ‘What is AI?’, earlier this year it was all about ‘how do we deploy it?’ and now we’re into the real practical use cases: ‘how do we organise work when AI agents become part of the workforce?’"

2. Getting started with AI means focusing on strategy and priorities

Knowing the transformative impact that AI could have is one thing but bringing AI into your business and maximising its potential is a challenge that many are facing.

Raghu Subramanian is the Head of Infosys Tennis Platform providing data analysis and insights to tennis tournaments around the world. AI is playing a huge role in the services Infosys provides to tournaments, players and coaches.

“The key is understanding where AI can benefit your business, so any decisions you make around AI need to have your organisational processes at the forefront. Understand what challenges you have and where AI can improve those workflows and make them more efficient,” he says.

Matt takes a similar view on the importance of having a clear view on where AI can really benefit your business. The LTA has a wide-raging remit, from elite performance and events to mass participation, and Matt’s role in tech transformation covers every element of that. So, implementing AI across the organisation demanded a robust and focused strategy.

“We offer a wide range of services and within that there’s a huge amount of potential use cases for AI. We had to decide where to focus first and how to test and experiment without over-committing,” he explains.

“That involved a lot of stakeholder engagement to ensure we were focusing on the areas where AI would have the biggest impact for us. Beyond that, it was vital to get the right guardrails in place from agreeing our usage policy to understanding and mitigating the security risks.”

3. AI is as much about your people as the technology

Any transformation project in a business succeeds or fails depending on whether the people in the company understand and buy into the change. It’s the same with AI, which Roland Emmans views as being as much a people opportunity and challenge as a technology one.

“The biggest challenge is potentially no longer the technology. It’s about helping people develop the skills and confidence to use it effectively,” he says.

“Think about the business problem that you've got and how AI can solve it for you. And make sure you take your people with you.”

It’s important to also give your people the right support so they can maximise their use of AI in their roles, as Raghu explains:

“The right training on what’s happening in terms of large language models is one example of this support but also ensure that training focuses on extracting the most value out of the technology, to benefit the business.”

4. Stay focused and don’t get distracted

The possibilities presented by AI are numerous and rapidly evolving. There’s a temptation to explore all avenues of AI in the expectation that it will benefit your business. But Raghu emphasises the importance of staying focused.

“I’m very excited about what is possible with AI, what we have learned is possible, and what we’re seeing is possible in the future, but it’s highly distracting,” he says.

“Every day, you hear about new developments and new use cases. So, it's important to stay focused on what you want to achieve because you can end up exploring things that might not really benefit your business or meet your needs."

5. Understand the value of insights vs data

We live in a world where data is ubiquitous. The challenge for any business is to turn that data into valuable insights and this is certainly an area where AI can help.

Matt and Raghu work in a sport that generates huge amounts of data but they both emphasise the need to produce tangible learning and outcomes from that data.

“In tennis we have access to a lot of data, but the winners are those that can derive real insights from it. We see real opportunity in using AI to help interpret data and improve everything from injury prevention to match preparation,” says Matt.

“Essentially it's not actually about the data, it's about how you use it."

Raghu supports that point and advises that business leaders need to be very clear on what they want to learn. He cites one tennis coach who wanted to understand his player’s level of intensity at a specific point in the match.

“That’s a very subjective view, of course, but it gave us a challenge to attack in terms of the data analysis. The lesson for me is: be very clear on the insight you want and set your teams the challenge to bring it to you. Don’t generate data for data’s sake.”

Whether it’s the business of tennis or any industry from manufacturing to marketing, organisations generate huge amounts of data, AI can help them extract real value from that information.

Roland concludes: “Data is becoming a commodity. The real advantage comes from generating better insights and acting on them faster than your competitors.”

Four things you could do next

1. Be very clear on what you want to achieve with AI. Identify an area of the business that causes friction, such as a repetitive weekly or daily process that could be automated, to free up time for you and your staff to focus on more value-added activities.
2. Train your teams both in terms of using the right prompts to get what they need from AI but also to critically evaluate AI outputs.
3. Set clear guidance and guardrails for the safe use of AI in your business. Establish a governance policy around the tools you use, the data you can put into them and when a human needs to make the final decision.
4. Think carefully about your data and how it’s being used by AI tools. Use an AI programme that will protect your data.