The AI Adoption Rate Dilemma – Digital CxO Podcast EP109

Hello and welcome to the digital CXO podcast. I'm Amanda Ani and with me today I have Mo Sharif. He is the senior director of AI at Sitecore.

How are you doing? I'm doing well. How are you, Amanda?

Doing well. Happy to have you on the show. Thanks.

So can you share a little bit about Sitecore and what do you do there? Sure. So Sitecore is a leading digital experience platform that really helps businesses deliver precise omnichannel experiences to their clients.

We have a number of products across the whole content life lifecycle and marketing operation lifecycle. And um, my job is really focusing on generative AI and AI and how can we bring them within our tools to really help marketers expedite the way they work. Wonderful.

Well that brings us to our topic today, which is the misalignment between the importance and adoption rate of AI and intelligence tools. So I have a little bit of information you shared, which is that 80% of marketing leaders report AI as critical for digital experiences workflows, but only 27% report full integration of AI into their digital strategy. Why do you think that is?

I think charity, there's a challenge in AI adoption. One, there is some change management where marketers themselves need to feel accustomed to prompt engineering to new ways of work. I think that's one of the leading things.

The second thing is ultimately there is this fear about where is my IP going? Do I have control on my brand? Is it adherent to my brand or not?

So I think these are big points that really drive people to not adopt it as fast as they possibly can. What suggestions do you have for company leaders when it comes to integrating AI and getting everyone on board? I think the first thing is really being able to test it, being able to try out ai, letting, giving your teams the space to really try out tools and innovate with these tools because again, it does take some time to getting used to these tools, but at the same time I think it brings so much value on the long term.

The second thing I think that's really critical is using the right tools. Again, just going out and trying any tool is not the right approach because there is a lot of security concerns, there is a lot of IP concerns. So it's really important to choose tools that can be trusted from, uh, vendors that can provide tools and assure you that they're not using, for example, your data for training their malls.

Mm. And finally, I think it's really important to use tools that really understand your brand. So it's not just about using a tool that will give you, uh, or spit out very generic terms and very generic content.

It's really about leveraging tools that really understand your brand so that they're in context so marketers can actually see the value straight away. So, So how do business leaders find the correct tools and ensure that they are trying to integrate the right technology? Yeah, I think there is a lot of research that they need to do.

Ultimately, they need to first define what are their biggest pain areas, what is driving their teams, uh, driving ultimately the, uh, the productivity of their teams down. And also it's not about tools to replace your teams, it's about tools to complement your team. So it's also, uh, about this open dialogue with your team on what do you wanna continue to do and what do you want AI to do on your behalf.

So I think it's that combination of the two. And once you've defined it, don't go big. Like don't try to pull the ocean.

Try to really optimize on, uh, which tools you wanna use and say, choose a set of tools and try them out first. Don't just jump in all, all in at once. Just try them out first.

Make sure they do it here and do your research, ask questions, let your IT come in and your security team come in and ask questions about how is this data gonna be used? Are you training them all with it to make sure that you're ultimately also keeping your IP in check? Absolutely.

There's a real likelihood of overwhelm if they just jump into too many tools at once and they're trying to track them and the safety and if they're really needed. So once we're in that integration stage and they've chosen a few select tools, what issues or roadblocks do you see company leaders facing and what suggestions do you have for them? I would say the biggest one is change management, is, again, adopting AI tools does require change management.

It requires again, an AI tool, just like a human being needs to always learn what's new, what's latest, so that it's contextually relevant. So being able to always have that knowledge, that data about your brand. Uh, I always say it's like you have a junior marketing marketer in your team.

If you don't give them the right knowledge, they're gonna get lost. So we need to treat AI in the same way and we need to really have the governance in place to ensure that when we use these tools, we don't just expect them to understand the way we work from day one, we actually take the time to teach them so that they can start becoming from junior to a senior marketer. Do you think that there is a lack of communication sometimes and maybe not, um, enough pathways for education and proper training that come into play?

Definitely. I think generative AI has been very interesting in terms of the speed at which things are going, at which things are changing. And that also creates a problem in training because what you get trained on today might become obsolete tomorrow.

So it's also important to talk about the roadmap openly with your partner, your vendor of choice about what's their roadmap, how do they see the future, how, how are they catering for today, but also for tomorrow. Because ultimately by the time you procure these products, you may find already changes that are happening and new things coming in so that you need to be able to, one, trust that they are keeping up with what's happening in the market, but two, they can really help your team get trained and be accustomed to, uh, that AI journey. Wonderful.

Well, AI is developing so rapidly. How do companies stay ahead and relevant with the technology as quickly as it's evolving? Yeah, I think generally it's hard if you're doing, if you're building everything yourself custom, right?

Like if you are gonna build everything custom, it's changing very, very rapidly. So again, I'd say one work with a trusted partner that can and is really investing in ai, make sure they are investing, not just adding bits and pieces of ai. We've seen this a lot where a lot of marketers get quickly frustrated because, uh, a lot of vendors, right, uh, have kind of went very quickly at adding AI for the sake of AI rather than really solving a business value.

And I think that's also a really important piece. It's not just keeping up with the trend for the sake of keeping up with the trend. It's about what business problem are you trying to solve.

You might hear about new technology, but the first question you should ask is, how is it gonna help me in my day-to-day work? How's it gonna improve my way of work or enhance my customer experience before jumping in and saying, I wanna use this tool? Awesome.

Well, if there was one key takeaway you could leave our audience with today, what would that be? I would say start now with ai because again, the train is moving and you're either on it or you're left behind. So I think it's essential to start now and start small.

Don't try to Boise the ocean. Alright. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your insights with us.

Thank You. Happy to be here. Thank you to our audience.

Stay tuned. There's more.