White Paper - Navigating the AI Stratosphere

Executive Summary

This Synozur white paper delves into the impact of generative AI (”GenAI”) on the digital workforce, highlighting findings from the 2024 Microsoft Work Trend Index (WTI) and Synozur's own research. It discusses AI usage, readiness, and recommendations for effective AI deployment.

High AI Usage but Lack of Readiness: The WTI shows that 75% of knowledge workers use AI at work, but 60% of leaders worry about their organization's lack of a plan and vision for using GenAI. Additionally, 78% of GenAI users rely on personal tools, raising security and privacy concerns.

Challenges in Digital Work: The digital weight of work has not decreased despite investments in flexible work technologies. Workers continue to spend significant time on communications rather than productive tasks, with 68% struggling with the pace and volume of work.

Microsoft's AI Recommendations: Microsoft recommends applying AI to every business problem, deploying it top-down and bottom-up, and prioritizing training for everyone to effectively embrace AI and its benefits.

Synozur's Research Findings: Our research found that over 53% of customers had little or no experience with AI, and about 49% had minimal AI usage across their organizations. The main concerns were security and cost.

Different Approach to AI Deployment: We propose a different approach to AI deployment, focusing on specific business challenges, prioritizing security and content controls, and adopting a measured approach to training and adoption.

Information Governance: Effective GenAI deployment relies on good information governance and security for cloud data. Organizations may need to improve governance, risk, and compliance practices or migrate offline data to cloud systems.

Factors Influencing AI Adoption: The adoption of Microsoft Copilot can be influenced by an organization's maturity in using Microsoft Teams, with key factors being user empowerment, change management, and skills transformation.

Real-World AI Implementation: A case study of a financial institution with over $2.5 trillion in AUM shows that successful AI adoption requires mature Teams usage, user empowerment, change management, and skills transformation.

While GenAI has transformative potential, its deployment should be carefully planned and executed, focusing on foundational collaboration, communication, productivity, and security.   That’s why we also provide guidance and resources for adopting GenAI in an organization, such as workshops, seminars, pilot projects, success stories, ethical guidelines, AI governance, adoption programs, and continuous learning.