Gartner’s AI ‘value chain’ offers schema for assessing an AI project

Not all AI projects are created equal. Some can provide incremental improvements such as using a virtual assistant to help with customer service. Applications like these don’t provide a competitive differentiation, but “are good places to start on your AI project,” Elliot said during a recent Gartner webinar, “A Framework for Applying AI in the Enterprise.”

Other AI projects can be more strategic in nature, where the enterprise seeks out a competitive advantage. “It often involves specific data that you have access to and that is unique to your operation,” he said. A strategic AI project such as a healthcare organization deploying conversational patient assistants to improve care will require more time, more skills and more experimentation than incremental improvement AI projects.

Elliot said one way to visualize an AI project’s level of difficulty is with Gartner’s AI “value chain,” a chart that lays out the purpose of an AI project against its complexity, needed expertise, project examples and technologies.

On one side of the value chain is a category called “core AI research,” which requires data science and machine learning expertise and is often carried out at research institutions. On the other side is deploying packaged AI solutions that are embedded into enterprise applications such as Salesforce Einstein or Microsoft Office.

In between are additional categories that include solution development, which Elliot said required a good amount of technology expertise and significant resources. There are two types of solution development. The more complex of the two is often characterized The less complex of the two is to utilize AI application platforms, which provide “drag and drop” environments to enable enterprise architects to put together, say, a chatbot or a virtual assistant, which can understand language and help users complete tasks. “This is the most active market we’re seeing right now — companies offering platforms to let enterprise developers build their solutions,” he said.

As CIOs move across the chart from left to right, the risks, the time, the costs and the necessary skills needed to get the project off the ground to achieve an objective decrease — as does the potential for strategic differentiation, according to Elliot.