Dear fellow Product Managers,
In the past, my students used to come to me with their cutting edge “the AI idea”'s and my response usually was that there is no “the AI idea” but there could be “the viable business idea” that may or may not utilize AI. Today, we see that the world has begun to understand that AI is not a one-of-a-kind or an obtrusive super-intelligence that will overtake humanity, but is another useful tool that simplifies our lives in a modest way, mostly hidden in the everyday products that we love. Especially in these unprecedented days, from face mask detection to face mask quality testing, artificial intelligence is proving its value through unprecedented applications.
In the second volume of The Intelligent Product newsletter, I am bringing to you more AI stories from all around the world about the products we love, the products that make us more efficient and effective. Please enjoy.
Developing these products requires hundreds of business and technology experts and an immense amount of collaboration between those experts. Therefore, I’ve invited four AI product experts from Silicon Valley to share with you their expertise and their journey in the amazing world of AI Product Management. Please join me on August 15th, 2020 at 9:00 AM PST for the “Break Into AI product Management” panel - a treat with the tech industry’s four brilliant business professionals Ali Khodaei, Ashok Ramani, Manjeet Singh and Shyamala Prayaga, who worked at companies such as Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Ford, HP, IBM, LinkedIn, ServiceNow, Yahoo and VoiceBox. Together, we will represent more than 100 years of cumulative experience in tech product development. Please RSVP for this one of a kind online conference available to you for free at https://www.aiproductinstitute.com/event. I look forward to seeing you there.
Please contact us at news@aiproductinstitute.com for any thoughts, suggestions, or feedback.
Be curious, be passionate!
Adnan Boz
AI Product Institute
Volume 2
Automotive
SAS reduces suspicious warranty claims and labor costs for 1200 Honda dealerships by using SAS AI solutions, SAS analytics, and SAS Forecast Server. Read the full story at https://www.sas.com/en_ae/customers/american-honda.html
Our opinion: The worldwide yearly car production is reaching an immense number of 100 million cars. This, in-turn, is fueling the auto service and repair industry - an industry with unprecedented profit margins ranging from 20% to 60%. However, only a few players in the industry such as Honda recognizes the opportunity to utilize the data to improve the bottom line. The reason is that seeing AI optimization opportunities that affect the bottom line requires AI business expertise. This is where AI product managers come into the picture, being able to identify AI opportunities by looking at a process or business is one of the critical AI Product Management skills.
Consumer Products
Reynolds Consumer Products, a well-known household name, simplifies internal processes and enhances analytics with the help of Infosys’ Robotic Process Automation solutions. Read the full story at https://www.infosys.com/services/ai-automation/case-studies/reynolds-consumer-products.html
Our opinion: Renowned organizational theorist and management consultant Dr. Geoffrey A. Moore points out in his book "Zone to Win" that productivity organizations deliver one or more of the following value propositions:
Regulatory compliance
Improved efficiency (“doing the right thing”)
Improved effectiveness (“doing the thing right”)
All three value propositions are product management responsibilities and changing any of these in an established organization requires business expertise. Furthermore, if the change involves AI, such as in robotic process automation, then expertise of an AI product manager is imperative.
Telecom
T-Mobile is building better predictive recommendations for customer service by freeing up their data scientists’ precious time using Amazon SageMaker Ground Truth. Read the full story at https://aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/customers/innovators/t_mobile/
Our opinion: In recent years, data labeling has turned into a multi-billion dollar industry that is growing with a CAGR of 28%. Labeled data is needed for machine learning tasks such as supervised learning and active learning that powers a majority of today's AI applications. From analyzing the need to make “buy vs. build vs. partner” trade-offs, AI product managers play a crucial role in enterprise data strategy. For instance, in an in-house high-volume labeling effort the AI product manager would be responsible for coordinating the work, assuring labeling accuracy, and consistency.
Retail
Microsoft and M&S (Marks and Spencer), one of Britain’s best known and most respected retail brands, are building the future of retail by deeply integrating machine learning, computer vision, and AI across every endpoint – both in its stores and behind the