People inside your organisation may already be experimenting with AI. That is useful.
But experimenting with AI and having an AI strategy are not the same thing.
At some point, you need to determine what the business actually wants to accomplish.
Ask your employees:
You may discover some of your best opportunities this way.
You may also discover activities that need clearer controls.
“Use more AI” is not a strategy. “Increase the amount of time our consultants can spend with customers” is much more useful.
Now you can look for administrative work that consumes consultants’ time. Likewise:
These objectives help you identify AI applications worth investigating.
You will probably have more ideas than resources. So compare them.
You do not have to start with the most exciting idea. Start with one that has a good chance of working.
This is where businesses sometimes become impatient.
Before adopting AI more widely, you may need to improve how business information is stored or who can access it. For Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft specifically recommends addressing inappropriate oversharing and establishing appropriate controls around organisational information.
This work may not feel like an AI project. But it helps create the foundation for one.
Do not measure success by how many employees have an AI licence. Measure what changed.
Those are much more useful measures.
AI will continue changing. Your roadmap therefore needs regular review.
Not a separate experiment.
Not technology for technology’s sake.
A practical tool used where it produces a meaningful business result. If it’s the right technology solution.
An AI roadmap is a prioritised plan for moving from individual experiments to managed business use. It sets objectives, identifies use cases, addresses information and security requirements and explains how value will be measured.
Compare business value, number of employees affected, available information, technical complexity, cost, risk and the ability to measure the result. Start with an opportunity that is useful and practical.
You need appropriate information access, security, approved tools, employee guidance and clear ownership. For Microsoft 365 Copilot, reviewing Microsoft 365 permissions and oversharing is particularly important.
A business leader should own the outcomes, supported by technology, security and representatives from the teams using AI. This prevents the roadmap becoming solely a technology project.
Review it regularly because tools, risks and business priorities are changing quickly. Quarterly reviews can help assess pilots, adoption, new opportunities and any controls that need improvement.
