Redefining Your Business with Data and AI in 2023: Strategies and Insights

AI and data are transforming the way businesses work.

Learn how to leverage these technologies to drive growth, increase efficiency, and create a competitive advantage in today’s digital landscape.

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Podcast Transcript:

Kiva Slade 0:01

Welcome to Collab with Kiva, where we let our inner nerd geek out on all the non sexy parts of your business. I'm talking data and operations. Neither as flashy or glamorous, but both are foundational to your business growth. I'm your host, Kiva Slade, your strategy and analytics guide here to break down what feels complicated, so it is understandable and executional. Let's dive in. Hey, hey, hey, welcome to another episode of Collab with Kiva. I am your host, Kiva Slade. And today, we are going to dive into some data but more operations. And it's inspired by an article that was recently in Forbes, and it was entitled data and AI will redefine businesses in 2023 by Sanjay Srivastava. Data and AI will redefine businesses in 2023. And we are approaching the end of the second month of 2023. So I feel like between the end of December when people started having access to Chat GPT and now it's like, I don't know, several years feel like they have passed or been condensed into one. And the article goes on to just talk about what it sees as actually three very large transitions throughout the entire world. The first transition is to a new geopolitical socio economic work order. The second is the transition to a low carbon economy. The third is the first truly scaled deployment of AI in the enterprise. And no, I'm not talking Star Trek. But the article reveals the three opportunities and challenges and just some technology trends that are taking shape. One is, enterprises, businesses are moving from being data poor, to data rich. Two, transformation efforts will shift from big data to big AI. Three, digital transformation becomes 80% people, 20% tech. So I'm gonna repeat those three again. Enterprises are moving from data poor to data rich. Transformation efforts will shift from big data to big AI. Digital transformation becomes 80% people 20% tech.

Kiva Slade 2:58

And I think that this stuff is important for us to pay attention to, because let's be honest, Canva for many of us, we utilize it, it's new doc function has AI features and capability, Chat GPT, Google has come out with Bard. There are many others on the horizon, that are all built off of these LLM large language models. And they are so well trained, so to speak, like outside of out the box, like just starting, we're not going to talk about Google's error regarding the James Webb telescope, but they are able to be used easily, and if you get in readily, by just every day citizens. Obviously Bard is going to be rolled out first to Google trusted partners and things of that sort. But it's able to be used by everyone. That has an ability to level playing fields that have been possibly unleveled in the past. And I think it's important that we think about these things and how they impact us in our business operations. So let's start with the first one, like data poor to data rich. In many cases, information has not always been readily available. Data hasn't always been readily accessible for smaller entities. So data now is in itself, it's a new class. It's a new function. It should be a function within your business. It should have a seat at the decision making table of your business, no matter the size. And when coupled with AI capabilities that helped make the data more usable, oh, oh, my goodness, like, possibilities could be endless here. Because companies, you've always had information, they break some of it down into structured data such as transactional data. There's also that unstructured data, social media, okay, for example, but having the two, and the two not being alike, so to speak, it's difficult to integrate and analyze them. So AI is able to take things like your PDF and pull out the key things that need pulling out. Some systems are out there now that will ingest thousands of financial filing documents and balance sheets and automatically extract like key financial ratios. So it's important to realize that these new tools, which do have an intersection when it comes to data and tech, and that there's value in how we are going to use these tools.

Kiva Slade 6:04

I remember recently having a conversation with my mom, and she was watching the news. And she says that she tries to listen to my podcast, and she had listened partially to the one with Chat GPT. And she was like, I don't even know what she's talking about. And then she heard about it on the news. And the refrain was from schools that kids are going to use it to write their own papers and all of these other things. And it just, I understand that. But I'm also a person who I had graph paper, and we had to make graphs. My kids had graphing calculators, like math is still being taught. It's, we just make some changes in how we do it. And that's what I was trying to explain to her that they're not going to start, like stop teaching writing, like a kid who utilizes this technology still has to know the subject matter, because you cannot trust automatically, what these systems these AI systems will give you, you do need to have, like facts and checks and balances. But I was trying to tell her like, it's not going to change how we it's I mean, learning itself is still going to be priority and paramount, but it's just how that's being done. Like my kids, like they had, like, seriously a graphing calculator. And I was like, what? I had to do this all by hand. Okay. It's called technology and advancement for a reason.

Kiva Slade 7:30

So, with that being said, though, how do we take those things and incorporate them into our businesses? Okay, what how do we do this? What do we do? Recently, I shared how you could use Chat GPT to get you started with creating SOPs. That's really great. Last week, I saw a or two weeks ago, recently, I saw a presentation where if you remember, Chat GPT in particular, only has information up to 2021. So anything kind of beyond that it doesn't have. There's a Chrome extension, oh, goodness, Web Chat GPT, I think it's called, that will also search the web. So that can help fill in that gap for you between 2021 and present day. And I was just like, I was watching and I was like, what, what's this extension? What is this? And the presentation. And I shared some of this in the last podcast really was helping someone create an actual marketing plan for a three month sales cycle, which is another data point. Do you know how long your sales cycle is, in order to market themselves on LinkedIn. And I've seen another presentation where someone has used content AI as a blog writer, but then has incorporated it with Chat GPT to pull out sections, rewrite some of it with celebrity kind of influences. I think they used Kate McKinnon and Lizzo. And so Chat GPT inserted that kind of personality into a section of the blog because that affiliates with their brand personality. But then it also they asked Chat GPT to give them a gift suggestion and it did. You know a gift from Schitts Creek. We all know how much I love Schitts Creek. And so it's utilizing these things to enhance the operations side of our business. Can we use them in a way to increase our own productivity or get us out of doing some of the things in our business that we shouldn't be doing? In one of those same presentations it really talked about, for many of us, we need to spend about 65% of our time selling in our business, and many of us can't do that, because we're doing all the other things that are in our business. So if you're feeling like, okay, maybe I can hire or maybe my VA can help with this.

Kiva Slade 10:18

How can we utilize that tech to support our team members in the work that they do? I know my Ops Assistant, she loves Chat GPT when she can get in. Because of the fact with SOPs, it just makes life so stinking easy. And it's such a good, I don't have to stare at the blank screen or start this from scratch. It jump starts the process for me. But now it has me thinking, how else can we utilize this? How else can we take data from say, my shield analytics on my LinkedIn performance, and take that information to craft posts based, you know, for LinkedIn, and do like how do we use this technology and data to improve and enhance what we are doing inside of my business? And I think that ties in to the part of digital transformation being 80% people and 20% tech, content AI, Chat GPT. There's, there's so many AI things, Jasper, like, there's art making AI, people are writing children's books and having them fully illustrated, like there's so much AI out there. And it's like, understanding that it's a tool. That's what it is, it's a tool. You still need people. I hate to be the one to break that bubble. But you're still gonna need people. You can get probably more things done, but you still need people. Because again, you need people to check it. Was it accurate? I don't know. Is this saying what I want it to say? Is it in the voice? Because of you use the stuff enough, and remind you garbage in garbage out, you really need to understand prompts and in how to prompt the AI understand that it's also conversational. So you might start with 'create an outline of for me for a podcast', that's then followed by it creates 'share with me some better examples that also have this CTA and also do this and dadadada and do this'. And it's like, okay, that prompt is much more specific. And the Chat remembers what you've talked about. So it's able to pull from there to add to and give you something different. So it's important to understand those prompts. But again, who's entering the prompts? Ding, ding, ding, ding. People! 80% People 20% tech. So there's areas in this digital transformation, and that the article talks about. We still obviously there's a role for people.

Kiva Slade 13:10

And that brings me to that question of are you preparing your team? Are you preparing yourself for different ways in which team you, your skills will be utilized? Okay, so they mentioned domain knowledge, like, it's important to have business, like you need to have people beside yourself possibly who understand your business and have that necessary knowledge to ask the right questions, but also to contextualize the answers. And trust me when we're talking data and just so much of this other stuff contextualizing answers is super duper important. But like that institutional knowledge is so still critically important. Okay? However, like work is changing hybrid teams, like all the remote teams, all the things we need to understand that with those changes, there's ways that we can utilize still, that knowledge that people have is like domain knowledge, okay? There's also this part though, about these shifts require different skills and capabilities. Like there's a level of digital literacy, there's another level of data analysis and basically change management that need to be understood. Organizations must, like have the right people in place with the right skills to require like a culture of curiosity, of agility, like people open to change. If you as a business owner are trying to embrace some of this technology and you have someone who is still holding on to 1980 late 1990 marketing plans, that's gonna be a problem. There's gonna be conflict there. Because what used to be set it and forget it is so not, and you need to be able to have people who are ready to roll with you, when you make these changes?

Kiva Slade 15:03

I think it's also important just to make sure you're putting stuff in place, like, how are you using this to help train up your team. Because if you have good team members, people who are ready to roll with you, they have that agility, they have that forward thinking, we want to support that in an, you know, an operational sense. It's no fun going out trying to hire Trust me, I do this for clients, it is so not fun in these internet streets. So being able to build up the people that you have and support them in the things that they're doing, and showing ways, walking alongside for ways to utilize this new AI technology and data in the business and how to do that. I had a meeting with a potential client who no one on our team is able to really analyze data. And she's like, I'm the only one and she's not always 100% sure that she's doing it right. And so it's important, I think that as we see these transformations taking place that we we reach out to others that we connect with others, we realize where our gaps are. And we realize who we need to talk to, to help fill those gaps. And I think that there's just possibilities, again, that are endless, and I think some of them we don't even know. And I reflect on this not only as a business owner, but as a parent. My kids have, you know, there's things that they're doing that some of it didn't exist, let's be honest, when I was growing up. Like for example, many of you know my son goes to LSU. Well, Mardi Gras was about to happen. And they stayed with a friend last year. So this year, I'm like, so what do you guys do for Mardi Gras, and he's like, oh, there's like 11 of us and we have an Airbnb, say, like, I'm just like thinking back reflecting my 19 year old self. In college, a) we know Airbnb did not exist, but let's be real, there was Bed and Breakfast. But there was definitely not an Airbnb that was available and a 10 minute walk to Bourbon Street instead. So I can remember girlfriend's like, we drove from Maryland to Panama City Beach for Spring Break. Like we didn't even stop along the way. It was like take turns driving, you know, pitstops for gas and bathrooms and food, but like we drove all the way there and we stayed hotel and we drove all the way back when it was time for us to leave like 11 of us in an Airbnb. Like, I love it. But I'm just also like, this is just how things have shifted, things are changing, and you got to be able to roll with it. If you're not rolling with it, it's really going to be uncomfortable and complicated, and unnecessarily.

Kiva Slade 18:00

So, again, digital transformations are occurring, but do not overlook the value, the importance of people. Tech is a tool. It's a tool used by people. So you still need to grow your team so that they can use the tools. And again, these large language models, LLM, like a it was something that was like available to large corporations only. Microsoft incorporating Chat Open AI into Bing, and they're gonna add it into Word and Excel and PowerPoint and stuff. Like I don't know about y'all, but I've been on Google forever, like Microsoft might look attractive again, like maybe I need to go back to Microsoft Office. But it's one of those things where it's like, they see that and now that they're opening this up to us, the masses, learning how to utilize it, how best to incorporate it into your business, is something that you should set aside time to do. Set aside yourself to be open, set aside yourself to welcome input from others, set aside your time for you to learn this so that you can add it into your business in a way that hey, it actually may redefine your business in 2023. So I'm sharing all of this to say that tech is here. It's been here, but these new iterations of things, this opening of things up to the masses, like this article said data and AI are gonna redefine businesses in 2023. The question becomes, are you allowing them to redefine your business and how? Or are you going to be the late adopter, be the tardy to the party, and wonder why certain things may have stalled in your business because you have not taken advantage of these tools and haven't built up your team to be able to better utilize these things. So as you plan out the rest of your year, remember, let Chat GPT hit over what a million billion users so much faster than any other platform out there. It's only going to increase. There are other AIs in the in the process of gaining additional funding in the process of coming available to people, to us, to level playing fields.

Kiva Slade 20:57

Don't get left behind. So data and AI will redefine businesses in 2023. The question you need to ask yourself is how will you allow them to redefine your business? So I look forward to hearing your thoughts and how you're utilizing AI in your business. If you have any questions, feel free to ping me, reach out to me. I love talking about this. I love deep diving into it. And I will see you next time. Bye. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Collab with Kiva. I'm wildly cheering you on as you go forth and execute data and operational efficiencies in your business. If you need additional support, connect with me via my website, the516collaborative.com. Your reviews on Apple are appreciated. See you next week.

Meet Kiva Slade - the Founder and CEO of The 516 Collaborative. With a unique background in high-power politics on Capitol Hill and sixteen years as a homeschooling mama, Kiva found her calling in the online business world as a trusted guide for entrepreneurs looking to build the business of their dreams.

Kiva's work began behind the scenes, orchestrating the back end of businesses and managing teams. But her inner data diva couldn't help but notice that small businesses needed help harnessing the power of data for growth. So she and her team set out to uncover and tidy up the data required to enable clients to grow their businesses confidently and easily.